THE  PROPHET  OF 
NAZARETH 


THE  PROPHET  OF 
NAZARETH 


BY 


NATHANIEL   SCHMIDT 

PROFESSOR   OF   SEMITIC    LANGUAGES   AND   LITERATURES 

IN    CORNELL   UNIVERSITY 

DIRECTOR    OF   THE    AMERICAN    SCHOOL   OF 
ARCHEOLOGY    IN   JERUSALEM 


got* 

THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

LONDON:  MACMILLAN  &  CO..  LTD. 
1905 

All  rights  reserved 


S43 


COPYRIGHT,  1905 
BY  THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

Set  up  and  electrotyped 
Published  December,  1905 


THE  MASON  PRESS 
SYRACUSE,  NEW  YORK 


In  flgtmoriam 


VIKTOR  RYDBERG  EBENEZER  DODGE 

AUGUST  DILLMANN 


Dies  diem  docet 


PREFACE 

This  volume  is  not  the  manifesto  of  a  school,  a  sect,  or  a 
party.  The  author  acknowledges  with  gratitude  the  help- 
ful suggestions  and  inspiring  influence  of  every  great 
thinker  and  every  faithful  worker  with  whom  he  has  come 
in  contact.  But  he  has  endeavored,  so  far  as  possible,  to 
see  with  his  own  eyes  the  character  of  each  important  prob- 
lem, and  to  present  in  his  own  language,  simply  and  un- 
equivocally, the  conclusions  to  which  many  years  of  study 
and  reflection  have  led  him.  In  attempting  to  make  a  com- 
prehensive statement  within  narrow  limits  of  space,  he  has 
often  been  obliged  to  give  the  bare  results  where  it  would 
have  been  a  pleasure  to  outline  the  course  of  protracted  in- 
vestigation. More  frequently,  a  few  suggestions  of  decisive 
facts  will  convince  the  reader  familiar  with  the  problems 
that  nothing  has  been  taken  for  granted  without  fresh  ex- 
amination. Wherever  it  seemed  necessary  to  indicate  care- 
fully the  grounds  for  a  view  not  yet  fully  understood  or 
generally  adopted,  the  author  has  had  no  hesitancy  in  doing 
so  at  sufficient  length.  Particularly  is  this  the  case  with  the 
question  as  to  the  origin  and  significance  of  the  term  "son 
of  man. ' '  As  the  author  was  the  first  to  suggest  that  Jesus 
never  used  this  term  concerning  himself,  either  to  claim 
Messiahship  in  any  sense,  or  to  hint  that  he  was  "a  mere 
man, "  or  * '  the  true  man, ' '  but  in  some  pregnant  utterances 
used  it  in  reference  to  ' '  man ' '  in  general,  his  duties,  rights, 
and  privileges,  he  has  felt  it  incumbent  upon  himself  to  at- 
tempt such  a  re-interpretation  of  the  life  and  teaching  of 
Jesus  in  the  light  of  this  conviction  as  has  been  urgently  and 
rightly  demanded. 

To  bring  out  more  fully  the  significance  of  this  changed 
estimate  of  Jesus,  it  appeared  desirable  to  examine  the  basis 
of  ecclesiastical  Christology  in  the  supposed  Messianic 

vii 


viii  PBEFACE 

prophecies  and  types  of  the  Old  Testament,  and  the  real 
teachings  concerning  the  Messiah  in  later  Jewish  literature, 
as  well  as  the  character  and  intrinsic  worth  of  the  Christ  of 
dogma.  It  has  been  the  aim  of  the  author  to  treat  with 
sympathy  and  reverence  a  conception  that  has  for  so  many 
centuries  furnished  spiritual  nourishment  to  men,  and  to 
point  out  the  historic  value,  not  less  real  because  rela- 
tive and  transitory,  of  this  and  kindred  ideas  destined  to 
pass  away ;  but  also  to  set  the  old  and  the  new  over  against 
each  other  so  clearly  that  men  may  see  that  there  is  no  pos- 
sible return  to  the  past,  and  no  permanent  escape  from  the 
consequences  of  scientific  research  by  such  compromises  as 
are  affected  by  many  at  the  present  time.  The  abandon- 
ment of  erroneous  positions  is  a  duty,  even  if  it  implies  un- 
certainty and  apparent  loss.  It  should  be  regarded  as  an 
inestimable  privilege,  when  it  renders  possible  a  deeper  in- 
sight into  the  historic  reality,  and  when  it  becomes  manifest 
that  this  reality  transcends  in  moral  value  the  fiction  it  dis- 
places. 

Just  and  thoughtful  men  will  always  remember  with  grat- 
itude the  master-builders  who  reared  the  imposing  struc- 
ture of  Christian  dogma  and  the  faithful  believers  of  every 
name  and  denomination  who  have  translated  its  most  valu- 
able thought  into  lives  of  spiritual  beauty.  But  as  the  bless- 
ings of  a  truer  knowledge  and  a  larger  faith  become  appar- 
ent, they  will  also  accord  due  honor  to  the  master-miners 
who  have  shattered  the  foundations  of  untenable  dogmas, 
and  most  of  all,  to  the  souls  who,  free  from  the  bondage  of 
external  authority  or  the  ambition  for  earthly  rewards,  have 
passionately  striven  for  the  truth,  drawn  inspiration  from 
noble  lives,  imposed  upon  themselves  wise  rules  of  con- 
duct, and  labored  for  the  emancipation  and  improvement  of 
the  human  race,  in  truest  imitation  of  him  who  lived  and 
died  for  the  sake  of  the  kingdom  of  heaven. 

The  last  revision  of  this  work  has  been  made  in  Pales- 
tine. Jews,  Christians  and  Muslims  have  covered  the  whole 
land  with  a  net-work  of  traditions.  It  would  be  difficult  to 
find  a  place  mentioned  in  the  Bible  that  has  not  been  identi- 


PREFACE  ix 

fied,  or  a  story  told  in  its  pages  that  has  not  been  located. 
The  pilgrims  to  these  sacred  sites  nourish  their  faith  by  be- 
holding the  very  spots  where  the  great  miracles  of  the  past 
took  place,  and  see  in  the  more  or  less  ancient  relics  which 
"are  with  us  to  this  day"  evidences  of  their  occurrence. 
It  is  sad  to  reflect  that  the  loss  of  this  na'ive  faith  would 
probably  rob  most  of  them  of  the  only  great  enthusiasm  or 
touch  of  ideality  that  ever  enters  into  their  monotonous  ex- 
istence. Less  sympathetic  is  the  credulity  of  learned  men 
who  easily  persuade  themselves  of  the  accuracy  of  any  tra- 
dition concerning  the  scenes  of  Jesus '  life  that  can  be  traced 
back  to  the  time  of  Constantine,  as  though  there  were  not 
room  enough  in  three  centuries  for  many  a  memory  to  pass 
away  and  many  a  loose  conjecture  to  grow  up  into  a  time- 
honored  tradition!  As  the  student  of  the  literary  docu- 
ments must  go  behind  his  text,  seeking  to  reconstruct  its 
original  form  and  estimate  its  value,  so  the  archaeologist 
must  free  himself  from  the  tyranny  of  topographical  tradi- 
tion, and  learn  to  treat  it  as  a  useful  servant.  If  at  first  the 
scantiness  of  positive  results  seems  a  loss,  there  gradually 
comes  a  sense  of  real  gain. 

For,  after  all,  it  was  in  this  little  land  that  Jesus  lived 
and  died.  His  eyes  looked  up  to  this  blue  Syrian  sky,  and 
rested  lovingly  upon  these  hills  and  valleys.  In  the  vicin- 
ity of  yonder  lake  of  Galilee  he  worked  as  a  carpenter  and 
taught  as  a  prophet.  In  this  city  and  its  immediate  neigh- 
borhood he  spent  his  last  days.  Here,  as  elsewhere,  nature 
sets  its  stamp  upon  man.  In  spite  of  all  changes,  the  people 
of  the  land  has  preserved  through  the  ages  substantially  the 
same  manner  of  life  and  modes  of  speech,  social  conven- 
tions, customs  and  occupations,  religious  views  and  prac- 
tices, and  general  outlook  upon  the  world.  The  Arabic  dia- 
lect spoken  is  more  like  Hebrew  than  the  language  of  the 
Qur  'an  is :  and  the  ordinary  f  ellahin  of  to-day  probably  re- 
semble the  Galilean  peasantry  of  nineteen  centuries  ago 
more  than  the  modern  Jew  does,  with  the  Talmud,  the 
Ghetto  and  the  Renaissance  in  his  blood.  It  was  with  such 
simple  folk  as  one  sees  every  day  in  the  villages  of  Palestine 


x  PBEFACE 

that  Jesus  grew  up  and  mingled  as  a  man,  and  the  classes 
with  which  he  came  into  conflict  may  still  be  found  in  this 
holy  city  of  three  religions.  Only  here  was  the  career  of 
the  Prophet  of  Nazareth  possible.  To  understand  both  the 
factors  that  determined  his  character  and  his  real  great- 
ness, his  personality  and  his  message  should  be  seen  against 
the  background  of  his  land  as  well  as  of  his  people  and  his 
time.  The  life  of  Jesus  fits  its  environment  in  nature  not 
less  perfectly  than  its  place  in  history. 

During  the  preparation  of  this  work  many  valuable  sug- 
gestions and  friendly  counsels  have  been  offered  by  Dr. 
James  M.  Whiton,  for  which  the  author  desires  to  express 
his  gratitude.  In  dedicating  the  volume  to  the  memory  of 
three  illustrious  teachers  to  whom  he  owes  much,  he  wishes 
to  intimate  also  his  indebtedness  to  three  universities  where 
it  was  his  privilege  to  study,  and  to  three  nations  to  which 
he  is  bound  by  the  strongest  ties. 

JERUSALEM,  January,  1905. 

THE  AUTHOR. 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  I 

THE   CHRIST   OF   THE   CREEDS 


CHAPTER  II 
THE  DECLINE  OF  DOGMA 11 

CHAPTER  III 
THE    OLD    TESTAMENT    BASIS 35 

CHAPTER  IV 
THE   JEWISH   MESSIAH  68 


CHAPTER  V 
THE  SON  OF  MAN          . 94 

CHAPTER  VI 
THE   SON  OF   GOD 135 

CHAPTER  "VTI 
THE  LOGOS '•»•',          159 

CHAPTER  VIII 
THE  SECONDARY  SOURCES 174 

CHAPTER  IX 
THE  GOSPELS  gns 


CHAPTER  X 
THE  LIFE  OF  JESUS 240 

CHAPTER  XI 
THE  TEACHING  OF  JESUS  2Q3 


CHAPTER  XH 
THE  HISTORIC  INFLUENCE  OF  JESUS 318 

I 

CHAPTER  XIII 
THE  PRESENT  PROBLEM  .  340 


xii  CONTENTS 


CHAPTEE  XIV 
THE  LEADERSHIP  OF  JESUS 360 

EXCURSUS  A 
GNOSTICISM  387 

EXCURSUS  B 
TEE  COLLEGIA  VICENTINA 390 

EXCURSUS  C 
THE  RESURRECTION «>  392 

INDEXES 

INDEX  OF  SUBJECTS 399 

INDEX  OF  AUTHORS 0  408 

INDEX  OF  TEXTS  414 


THE  PROPHET  OF  NAZARETH 

CHAPTER  I 
THE  CHEIST  OF  THE  CEEEDS 

Every  man  is  a  creed-maker.  He  forms  his  view  of  the 
world  by  observation  of  external  reality  and  reflection  upon 
the  states  of  his  own  consciousness.  His  interpretation  of 
life  is  subject  to  constant  change,  and  is  at  no  moment  quite 
identical  with  that  of  any  other  man.  In  proportion  as  his 
range  of  vision  is  wide  and  his  judgment  accurate,  his  creed 
differentiates  itself  and  assumes  a  distinctive  character. 
Disinterested  search  for  truth  by  capable  and  independent 
minds  leads  to  diversity  of  belief,  as  well  as  to  increase  of 
knowledge. 

But  there  is  also  a  collective  creed-making.  Similarity 
of  origin  and  environment  tends  to  create  similarity  of  life 
and  thought.  In  family,  political  society,  and  cult-com- 
munity, there  is  a  ceaseless  labor  to  produce  a  common  creed 
and  to  express  in  common  customs  this  corporate  faith.  A 
tradition,  based  on  the  accumulated  experience  and  thought 
of  many  generations,  presents  itself  as  an  invaluable  aid  to 
the  individual  in  the  formative  period  of  his  life,  and  con- 
tinues to  be  his  chief  assistance,  stimulus,  and  corrective, 
whatever  new  facts  he  may  discover,  and  however  discrimi- 
nating his  judgment  may  be.  This  tradition  changes  with 
the  growth  of  the  social  organism.  A  collective  creed  never 
implies  uniformity  of  belief.  But  the  transformation  is 
slower  than  in  the  case  of  the  individual,  and  similarity  of 
view  is  a  strong  cohesive  force.  The  common  creed  pro- 
duces unity  of  purpose,  efficiency  of  practical  endeavor,  and 
assurance  of  faith. 

1 


THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZAEETH 


The  power  of  beliefs  largely  adopted  by  society,  and  em- 
bodied in  its  life,  to  shape  the  thoughts  of  men,  is  counter- 
balanced by  the  reaction  upon  society  of  new  ideas  backed 
by  strong  personalities.  The  centripetal  force  is  equalled 
in  the  long  run  by  the  centrifugal  force,  the  tendency  to 
preserve  the  type  by  the  tendency  to  vary  the  type.  Where 
freedom  of  thought  and  speech  gives  opportunity  for  the 
development  of  a  distinct  personal  creed  and  for  influencing 
public  opinion,  while  the  social  creed,  whether  symbolized 
in  formulas  or  merely  found  in  a  general  understanding,  is 
sensitive  and  flexible,  the  balance  of  these  forces  is  best 
maintained.  To  the  importance  of  the  personal  initiative 
is  due  the  development  of  creeds  concerning  great  men. 
Mighty  rulers  holding  nations  in  subjection,  forceful  char- 
acters assuming  leadership,  wonder-workers  possessing  un- 
usual powers,  sagacious  interpreters  of  nature's  life,  en- 
thusiastic heralds  of  some  fresh  evangel,  naturally  become 
the  objects  of  interest,  curiosity  and  worship.  The  mysteri- 
ous power  exercised  by  these  men  is  more  readily  felt  than 
explained.  No  human  life  can  be  fully  known.  Much 
must  always  be  left  for  imagination  to  supply.  Imagination 
may  resort  to  local  setting  and  historic  circumstance,  or  it 
may  draw  upon  the  general  characteristics  of  a  class.  A 
man's  inner  life  cannot  escape  the  effect  of  the  nature  that 
surrounds  him,  the  social  milieu  in  which  he  finds  himself. 
A  prophet  is  likely  to  do  a  prophet's  work,  a  king  to  shine  in 
royal  splendor,  a  sage  to  unlock  nature's  mysteries.  The 
influence  of  a  great  man  is  only  in  part  due  to  what  he  ac- 
tually says,  or  does,  or  is:  in  a  large  measure  it  is  due  to 
this  tendency  to  eke  out  the  known  facts  with  more  or  less 
plausible  conjectures  drawn  from  environment,  analogy, 
or  ideal. 

At  a  certain  stage  of  human  development,  the  secret  of 
heroic  lives  is  found  in  their  connection  with  a  higher  world. 
Beings  greater  than  man,  it  is  thought,  give  to  their  chosen 
ones  strength  that  is  more  than  human,  and  knowledge  that 
lies  beyond  the  reach  of  man 's  unaided  intellect.  But  such 
gifts  would  not  come  to  them,  if  they  were  not  of  finer  clay 


THE  CHEIST  OF  THE  CREEDS 


than  ordinary  mortals.  Their  destiny  is  higher,  their  or- 
igin more  sublime.  When  they  depart  from  earth,  they  are 
not  left  to  see  corruption,  but  go  to  share  the  divine  nature, 
and  to  receive  divine  worship.  When  they  appear  on  earth, 
they  are  not  born  of  the  will  of  man,  but  come  from  a  celes- 
tial world  and  have  a  divine  paternity.  Euhemerus  sug- 
gested that  all  gods  had  once  lived  as  men  upon  the  earth. 
This  is  a  defective  generalization.  Countless  men,  warriors, 
judges,  patriarchs,  kings,  sages,  prophets,  have,  indeed,  be- 
come gods.  But  innumerable  gods  have  also  become  men, 
not  only  by  the  gradual  transformation  of  nature-spirits 
into  the  image  of  man,  but  by  an  actual  entrance  upon  the 
life  of  a  human  being,  by  an  incarnation. 

It  is  natural  that  the  category  of  divinity  dominates  the 
conception  of  even  the  earthly  life  of  such  personalities. 
Faith  does  not  live  by  verifiable  facts  of  history  alone;  it 
clings  for  its  support  to  the  present  ideal ;  it  seeks  the  eter- 
nal truth  and  grace  that  once  flashed  forth  in  sudden  rays  of 
incarnate  beauty. 

One  of  the  mightiest  conceptions  that  ever  swayed  the 
mind  of  man  is  the  Christ  of  the  great  ecumenic  creeds. 
These  creeds  register  the  results  of  centuries  of  thought; 
they  set  forth  the  finished  product  of  a  long  development. 
The  roots  of  the  idea  lie  deep  in  Hebrew  antiquity.  The 
prophetic  movement  prepared  the  way  for  it.  Political 
hopes,  doomed  to  disappointment,  rose  to  furnish  the  ma- 
terial of  its  growth.  In  the  apocalyptic  literature  of  the 
Koman  period,  the  Messiah  appeared.  An  interpretation, 
true  to  prevalent  methods  and  fit  to  meet  the  needs  of  the 
age,  discovered  his  lineaments  in  many  a  passage  of  the 
Hebrew  Bible,  and  in  many  a  person,  custom,  or  institution, 
a  type  of  his  character  and  reign.  Early  Christian  litera- 
ture, not  less  than  the  Aramaic  Targums,  testifies  to  this. 
Thus  the  Old  Testament  became  the  source  whence  appar- 
ently the  Messianic  ideal  issued  forth.  The  converging 
point  of  all  its  streams  was  the  life  of  Jesus.  If  the  tradi- 
tion of  this  life  was  enriched  by  features  taken  from  the 
prophetic  word,  the  scope  of  Messianic  prophecy  was  en- 


THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZAEETH 


larged  at  the  suggestion  of  incidents  in  the  biography. 
But  the  writers  of  the  New  Testament  did  not  only  work  to- 
gether Biblical  material  with  the  tradition  of  what  Jesus  had 
said  and  done ;  they  also  built  upon  foundations  that  had 
been  laid  in  Greece  and  in  the  Orient.  The  strong  Hellenis- 
tic element  in  the  New  Testament  facilitated  a  continuous 
development  of  thought.  It  was  not  altogether  a  new  world 
the  first  Greek  converts  to  Christianity  were  bidden  to  enter. 
There  were,  indeed,  many  ideas  that  must  have  seemed  very 
strange,  but  also  some  that  were  quite  familiar.  The  most 
advanced  type  of  Christology,  which  to  the  ordinary  Jew 
was  least  comprehensible  and  most  objectionable,  is  likely 
to  have  been  one  of  the  most  congenial.  There  is  no  chasm 
between  the  latest  forms  of  thought  in  the  New  Testament 
and  the  conceptions  prevalent  in  other  Christian  writings 
of  the  second  century.  However  imperfect  their  methods 
of  interpretation  may  appear  to  modern  minds,  it  would  be 
wrong  to  charge  the  Greek  apologists  and  fathers  with  seri- 
ously mistaking  the  trend  of  New  Testament  teaching. 
And  the  great  ecumenic  creeds  rest  upon  patristic  Christol- 
ogy. These  creeds  are  a  consistent  development  of  certain 
ideas  that  unquestionably  hold  an  important  place  in  New 
Testament  literature.1 

It  was  honestly  felt  by  some  of  the  keenest  minds  of  the 
fourth  century  that  the  Christ  they  defined  by  dogma  was 
none  else  than  the  divine  personality  whose  advent  was  pre- 
dicted by  the  Old  Testament  and  proclaimed  by  the  New 

1Eitschl  and  his  school  rightly  emphasized  the  fresh  influence  of 
Greek  speculation  upon  the  developing  Christian  dogma  that  came 
with  the  first  educated  converts  from  paganism.  But  they  were  in- 
clined to  overlook  the  large  element  of  Greek  thought  that  already 
existed  among  the  Hellenistic  Jews,  to  whom  we  owe  the  most  impor- 
tant types  of  Christology  in  the  New  Testament.  Similarly,  the  early 
Unitarians  rendered  a  valuable  service  by  pointing  out  that  the  doc- 
trine of  the  Trinity  was  nowhere  distinctly  taught  in  the  New  Testa- 
ment, as  had  been  erroneously  maintained,  but  themselves  erred  when, 
seeking  Scriptural  support  for  their  conception  of  Jesus,  they  failed 
to  give  their  full  weight  and  natural  significance  to  passages  that  un- 
mistakably tend  in  the  direction  of  this  doctrine. 


THE  CHEIST  OF  THE  CEEEDS 


Testament.  This  conviction  was  well  nigh  inevitable.  Was 
not  the  Old  Testament  full  of  distinct  prophecies  of  the  com- 
ing of  Christ,  his  life,  his  death  and  his  resurrection  ?  Did 
it  not  contain  types  clearly  pointing  to  him?  Had  not 
these  prophecies  and  types  been  recognized  by  New  Testa- 
ment writers,  nay,  by  Jesus  himself  ?  Did  not  his  life  cor- 
respond to  the  prophetic  picture?  Had  he  not  claimed  to 
be  the  Messiah  and  been  declared  by  God  to  be  his  only  Son  ? 
Were  not  the  miracles  he  wrought  a  ratification  of  his 
claims?  And  must  he  not  have  been  very  God  to  accom- 
plish the  work,  of  man's  redemption,  to  abrogate  the  law,  to 
satisfy  the  demands  of  infinite  justice,  to  offer  an  accept- 
able sacrifice  for  the  sins  of  the  world,  and  to  open  the  gates 
of  paradise  to  all  believers  ?  Only  a  being  who  was  at  the 
same  time  true  God  and  true  man  could  restore  fallen  man 
to  his  original  state  of  purity,  heal  the  mortal  wound  in- 
flicted on  him  in  the  garden  of  Eden,  overcome  the  devil's 
power,  and  conquer  death  itself. 

While  thus  the  Christ-conception  authoritatively  pre- 
sented by  the  church  appeared  to  be  fully  verified  by  the 
recognized  standards  of  divine  revelation,  an  even  more  im- 
portant ratification  of  the  doctrine  came  from  Christian 
experience.  This  divinely  human  being  was  not  simply  a 
historic  personage  belonging  to  the  past.  Nor  was  he  a 
mere  abstraction,  a  product  of  idle  speculation.  He  was  a 
present  reality,  the  object  of  love  and  worship.  He  was  a 
living  source  of  spiritual  blessings.  Communion  with  him 
gave  power  to  overcome  the  bondage  of  sin,  to  endure  the 
ills  of  life,  to  face  courageously  even  the  last  enemy.  It 
flooded  the  soul  with  a  joy  that  the  world  could  not  give, 
a  boundless  hope,  and  a  sympathy  that  reached  down  to 
earth's  little  ones,  the  weak,  the  ignorant,  the  debased.  It 
was  a  refuge  in  all  hours  of  need.  The  believer  knew  that 
his  Redeemer  lived,  and  that  no  words  could  adequately  ex- 
press his  supreme  worth,  from  an  experience  that  was  more 
real  to  him  than  were  the  shifting  scenes  and  sensations  of 
earth-bound  life.  Affection,  as  well  as  thought,  centered 
upon  him  and  demanded  to  know  what  he  was.  The  def- 


THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZAEETH 


inition  was  a  work  of  adoring  love  not  less  than  of  profound 
meditation.  There  were  other  forces  at  work.  The  shad- 
ows fall  wherever  the  sun  shines.  But  the  chief  factors  in 
the  construction  of  Christological  dogma  were  an  honest  in- 
terpretation of  the  Scriptures  and  an  equally  honest  inter- 
pretation of  the  facts  of  Christian  experience. 

This  Christ-conception  has  been  perpetuated  by  the  same 
forces  that  gave  it  existence.  If  it  owed  its  finally  prevail- 
ing form  to  ecclesiastical  authority,  by  ecclesiastical  author- 
ity it  has  been  upheld.  Men  have  sought  to  make  it  their 
own  because  of  this  authority,  from  love  or  fear  of  conse- 
quences, or  unreflecting  conformity.  The  resources  of  ec- 
clesiastical power  have  been  employed  to  discourage  men 
from  adopting  different  views.  Yet  this  external  pressure 
has  probably  contributed  much  less  than  is  generally  sup- 
posed to  the  longevity  of  dogma. 

Of  greater  and  more  permanent  significance  is  the  au- 
thority ascribed  to  the  Scriptures.  As  the  Christ  of  the 
creeds  would  not  have  become  what  he  was  but  for  the  au- 
thority of  that  divine  revelation  which,  as  it  was  inter- 
preted, outlined  precisely  such  a  personality  in  prophecy 
and  fulfilment,  in  type  and  antitype,  so  he  has  remained  un- 
changed through  the  centuries  in  no  small  measure  by  vir- 
tue of  the  authority  accorded  to  these  Scriptures  which,  it 
was  felt,  bore  witness  of  him.  But  even  the  assertion  of 
infallible  authority  would  not  secure  such  a  recognition  as 
this  conception  has  had. 

Only  a  genuine  personal  conviction  can  explain  the  long 
and  general  acceptance  of  the  Christ  of  the  creeds.  This 
conviction  has,  to  a  great  extent,  been  formed  by  a  consci- 
entious study  of  the  sources.  Starting  with  certain  primal 
assumptions,  the  student  cannot  easily  reach  any  other  con- 
clusion :  and  these  assumptions  are  so  natural  that  it  does 
not  readily  occur  to  him  even  to  question  them.  If  the  tra- 
dition that  ascribes  the  Gospels  to  immediate  followers  of 
Jesus  is  accepted,  and  the  correctness  of  their  use  of  the  Old 
Testament  is  taken  for  granted,  the  result  cannot  be  doubt- 
ful. The  early  narratives  in  Genesis  will  then  be  regarded 


THE  CHEIST  OF  THE  CEEEDS 


as  historical;  the  political  hopes  of  Israel  as  Messianic 
prophecies;  personalities,  events  and  institutions  of  the 
chosen  people  as  types  of  Christ;  the  sayings  reported  in 
the  Gospels  as  the  very  words  of  Jesus;  the  lofty  claims 
that  some  of  these  utterances  contain  in  connection  with  the 
miracles  recorded  as  evidence  of  a  double  personality,  hu- 
man and  divine,  not  unfittingly  described  in  the  terms  of 
the  great  creeds.  On  the  other  hand,  why  should  not  eye- 
witnesses have  written  down  the  story  of  Jesus '  life  ?  And 
who  would  be  better  fitted  for  interpreting  the  divine  reve- 
lation of  the  past  than  the  immediate  recipients  of  the 
crowning  revelation  in  which  the  old  found  its  fulfilment? 

Even  the  most  enlightened  and  truth-seeking  of  men,  pro- 
ceeding from  such  general  assumptions,  would  naturally  see 
in  the  New  Testament  authority  for  seeking  in  the  Old  Tes- 
tament a  prophetic  description  of  Christ,  in  the  fulfilment  of 
prophecy  in  the  New  Testament  evidence  of  the  authority  of 
the  Old  Testament,  and  in  the  dogma  of  the  Church  a  legiti- 
mate statement  of  the  most  essential  teachings  of  both.  A 
different  estimate  is  precluded  by  modes  of  interpreta- 
tion that  receive  their  sanction  from  apostolic  use.  The 
allegorical  method  draws  attention  away  from  gram- 
matical sense,  literary  form,  and  historic  setting,  to  a  hidden 
meaning  organically  connected  with  the  body  of  accepted 
doctrine.  It  finds  the  same  unchanged  ideas  everywhere  in 
the  Scriptures.  Its  legacy  is  a  certain  inability  to  distin- 
guish between  things  that  differ,  an  often  unconscious  ten- 
dency to  overlook  inconsistencies  and  contradictions,  a 
proneness  to  view  ideas  scattered  through  a  literature  ex- 
tending over  a  thousand  years  as  integral  parts  of  one  sys- 
tem of  thought,  a  lack  of  historic  sense.  The  very  looseness 
of  an  interpretation  that  cannot  quite  emancipate  itself 
from  these  effects  of  the  allegorical  method  may  add  strength 
to  conviction,  since  it  removes  all  obstacles  and  allows  sub- 
jective faith  to  see  its  own  reflection  in  the  Bible. 

But  the  most  powerful  influence  tending  to  perpetuate 
the  Christological  dogma  is,  without  question,  the  associa- 
tion, in  the  mind  of  the  believer,  of  the  statements  of  the 


THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZAEETH 


creed  with  the  experiences  of  his  own  soul.  A  nature  foul 
with  inherited  evil  proclivities  and  acquired  sinful  habits  is 
cleansed  and  filled  with  holy  aspirations,  love  of  goodness, 
and  spiritual  power  by  contact  with  the  Son  of  God.  In- 
stead of  doubt  and  perplexity,  moral  weakness  and  an  aim- 
less drifting  with  the  fashions  of  the  world,  a  fruitless  search 
for  pleasure  and  a  cheerless  labor,  a  dull  indifference  to  fate 
or  a  constant  fear  of  death,  there  are  the  light  and  power  of 
an  all  conquering  faith,  the  strenuous  effort  to  realize  a  high 
ideal,  the  joy  of  work  for  noble  ends,  and  the  hope  of  an 
immortal  life.  The  dangers  that  beset  man 's  life  no  longer 
terrify,  no  earth-born  happiness  can  enthral,  the  tenderest 
ties  have  no  power  to  bind  to  earth  the  citizen  of  a  heavenly 
Jerusalem  who  lives  in  mystic  union  with  his  Lord.  This 
stream  of  life  points  to  a  living  fountain,  a  source  never 
contaminated  with  impurity.  As  the  believing  soul  draws 
nearer  to  the  Christ,  he  breathes  a  purer  air ;  the  atmosphere 
of  holiness  surrounds  him,  and  he  feels  more  keenly  his  own 
sinfulness.  The  more  completely  he  surrenders  his  will  and 
heart  to  his  divine  Master,  the  more  manifest  is  his  grace. 
What  the  Christ  is  to-day  he  must  have  been  yesterday. 
How  could  he  have  been  born  of  "the  will  of  the  flesh"? 
Can  the  pure  come  from  the  impure  ?  How  could  he  be  the 
Saviour  from  sin  that  a  redeemed  nature  with  its  every 
fibre  proclaims  him  to  be,  unless  his  life  had  been  an  abso- 
lutely sinless  one?  Were  the  miracles  performed  by  the 
lake  of  Galilee  more  wonderful  than  the  miracles  unques- 
tionably wrought  in  the  inner  life  of  many  a  soul?  How 
could  God's  Holy  One  be  left  in  the  clutches  of  death? 
Must  he  not  be  the  first-fruits  of  a  resurrection  whose  power 
does  not  wait  for  death  to  manifest  itself?  He  whose  life 
is  hid  with  Christ  in  God  is  led  by  his  own  experience,  and 
no  longer  because  others  have  told  him  about  the  Son  of  God, 
to  confess  that  in  him  the  divine  that  men  must  worship 
blends  indistinguishably  with  a  humanity  that  men  cannot 
behold  without  emulating  its  supreme  virtues. 

The  Christ  of  the  creeds  has  thus  maintained  a  hold  upon 
the  most  advanced  nations  of  mankind  chiefly  through  the 


THE  CHEIST  OF  THE  CEEEDS 


study  of  the  Scriptures  and  the  concurrent  testimony  of 
Christian  experience.  The  methods  pursued  in  the  study  of 
the  Bible  rendered  its  interpretation  in  all  essential  points 
more  certain  from  age  to  age.  The  type  of  Christian  experi- 
ence and  character  produced  under  the  influence  of  Christian 
dogma  brought  conviction  of  the  essential  soundness  of  this 
interpretation  home  to  generation  after  generation  of  men. 
This  does  not  imply  that  the  conception  has  been  the  same  in 
all  minds.  In  point  of  fact  no  two  minds  have  ever  conceived 
of  the  God-man  in  precisely  the  same  manner.  The  world 
of  thought  in  which  a  thirteenth  century  scholastic,  or  a 
sixteenth  century  reformer,  moved  was  in  many  respects 
different  from  that  familiar  to  a  Greek  father  of  the  fourth 
century.  But  the  great  currents  of  thought  seem  to  have 
largely  swept  past  the  domain  of  Christology,  and  the  com- 
mon formulas  represent  a  considerable  similarity  of  view. 
It  is  impossible  to  contemplate  this  wonderful  conception 
that  has  exercised  an  influence  so  vast  and  uplifting  in 
human  history  without  the  deepest  reverence  and  gratitude. 
A  long  procession  marches  down  the  ages  bearing  trophies 
to  this  Christ.  Among  them  are  men  of  genius  and  men  of 
faith,  evangelists  and  martyrs,  thinkers  and  reformers, 
knights  and  statesmen,  missionaries  and  philanthropists. 
There  are  rare  and  radiant  spirits  of  whom  the  world  was 
not  worthy,  pure,  high-minded,  self-forgetful,  rich  in  faith 
and  hope  and  charity.  And  there  is  an  innumerable  host  of 
men  and  women  rescued  from  sensuality  and  greed  to  lives 
of  purity  and  gentle  service.  These  all  proclaim  him  Sa- 
viour, Lord  and  God.  In  his  name  they  have  fought  the  good 
fight,  borne  their  burdens  gladly,  fed  the  hungry,  clothed 
the  naked,  freed  the  slave,  lifted  up  woman,  educated  the 
child,  brought  peace  to  the  earth.  If  in  his  name  men  have 
also  perpetrated  deeds  of  darkness,  it  has  only  been  neces- 
sary to  look  more  closely  into  his  face,  even  as  tradition 
painted  it,  to  see  the  look  of  disapproval.  Through  him  the 
divine  has  come  very  near  to  the  human,  time  has  been 
lapped  in  the  bosom  of  eternity,  life  has  received  a  new 
meaning. 


10  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZAEETH 

Perhaps  no  man  ever  felt  the  intrinsic  worth  of  the 
prophecy,  the  psalmody,  the  legislation  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment as  deeply  as  he  who,  having  looked  upon  the  face  of 
the  heavenly  Christ,  saw  the  glory  vanish  from  the  cove- 
nant of  the  letter.  So  it  may  be  that  the  beauty  of  the  Christ 
is  best  seen,  the  grandeur  and  power  of  the  celestial  Son  of 
God  are  most  fully  appreciated,  by  him  whose  eyes  have 
been  entranced  by  the  surpassing  glory  of  the  new  concep- 
tion that  is  destined  to  take  its  place,  the  ideal  suggested 
by  the  life  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth,  as  a  critical  study  of  the 
records  is  able  to  restore  it. 


CHAPTER  II 
THE  DECLINE  OF  DOGMA 

Parallel  with,  the  process  through  which  the  collective 
creed  is  authoritatively  formulated  and  permanently  fixed 
runs  the  tendency  of  individual  creed-making  to  sap  its 
foundations  and  to  produce  divergent  types  of  belief.  The 
ethical  and  religious  impulses  of  primitive  Christianity, 
while  furnishing  the  material  for  dogma,  prevented  its  crys- 
tallization. "  Where  the  spirit  of  the  Lord  is,  there  is  lib- 
erty. "  Where  liberty  reigns,  uniformity  is  impossible. 
This  liberty,  however,  in  the  first  period,  largely  resulted 
from  the  predominance  of  practical  interests.  Seeing  that 
the  world  would  soon  pass  away,  and  the  Master  return  on 
the  clouds  as  the  Messiah,  what  manner  of  men  ought  the 
disciples  of  Jesus  to  be  f1  This  was  the  great  question.  The 
emphasis  was  on  conduct. 

When,  subsequently,  reflection  upon  the  character  and 
source  of  the  new  life  tended  to  produce  a  common  creed,  it 
remained  sensitive  to  the  influence  of  powerful  personalities. 
Such  was  the  force  of  the  spiritual  impact,  such  the  convic- 
tion wrought  by  a  deep  experience,  that  these  men  could  not 
refrain  from  asserting  their  right  to  be  heard.  Such  was 
their  sense  of  the  inexhaustible  riches  of  the  truth,  as  it  was 
in  Jesus,  such  their  joy  in  the  new  world  of  thought  that  had 
been  opened  to  them,  that  men  were  inclined  to  welcome 
with  broad  hospitality  ideas  of  different  provenience  and 
value.  There  was  indeed  no  doctrine  of  toleration,  no  rec- 
ognition of  the  necessity  of  divergence,  or  of  the  right  to  dif- 
fer. Dissenters  were  anathematized.  The  radicalism  of 
the  Pauline  epistles  claimed  for  itself  a  freedom  that  it  was 
not  quite  willing  to  accord  to  the  conservatives.  The  ad- 

1 2  Peter,  ii,  11.     This  formulation  is  late,  but  the  thought  is  early. 

11 


12  THE  PKOPHET  OF  NAZARETH 

vanced  theology  of  the  Johannine  literature  handled  the  ele- 
ments of  tradition  with  sovereign  independence,  and  its 
deep  spiritual  intuition  pointed  to  love  as  the  essence  of 
life;  yet  it  could  not  quite  refrain  from  basing  fellowship 
upon  doctrinal  agreement.  But  the  fact  that  so  widely  di- 
vergent types  of  thought  as  those  found  in  the  Synoptic, 
Pauline  and  Johannine  writings  could  develop  at  all,  and 
secure  recognition  side  by  side  among  the  treasures  of  the 
Church,  is  none  the  less  significant.  It  shows  that  dogma 
could  not  crystallize  in  such  an  atmosphere. 

The  allegorical  method  of  the  Alexandrian  rhetoricians 
and  the  epoch-making  philosophy  of  Philo,  while  supplying 
the  instruments  for  the  development  of  dogma,  were  dan- 
gerous allies  threatening  its  life.  This  method,  however, 
saved  the  Old  Testament  in  its  conflict  with  Greek  thought. 
This  philosophy  rescued  the  Messiah.  By  allegorizing  it  is 
possible  to  see  the  invisible,  to  discover  behind  the  literal 
sense  a  meaning  not  intended  by  the  author  but  demanded 
by  the  interpreter,  to  explain  all  contradictions  and  to  re- 
move all  difficulties.  Philo 's  keen  intellect  perceived  many 
of  the  facts  that  have  forced  ancient  and  modern  critics  to 
a  different  estimate  of  the  Bible.  But  these  very  facts  con- 
vinced him  of  the  accuracy  of  his  method.  He  was  per- 
suaded that  the  world  could  not  have  been  made  in  six  days, 
that  the  first  woman  was  not  fashioned  from  a  man's  ribs, 
that  serpents  cannot  speak  and  fruits  cannot  give  knowl- 
edge, and  that  God  is  neither  subject  to  fits  of  passion  nor 
in  need  of  repentance.  The  words  of  the  Bible  could  not, 
therefore,  mean  what  they  seemed  to  mean.  They  were 
symbols  of  deeper  spiritual  processes.  There  is  no  dishon- 
esty in  this  reasoning,  as  long  as  it  is  sincerely  felt  to  be  the 
only  rational  way  of  accounting  for  certain  facts  that  are 
frankly  admitted.  Armed  with  this  method,  the  Church 
was  prepared  to  resist  the  attacks  of  Gnostic  teachers  and  of 
such  men  as  Celsus  and  Porphyry. 

The  Messianic  idea  could  not  thrive  except  in  the  soil  of 
Palestine.  Here  was  the  throne  of  the  coming  King ;  here 
was  the  home  of  the  eschatological  speculation  that  threw 


THE  DECLINE  OF  DOGMA  13 

such  a  glamor  about  his  person.  In  the  rarefied  air  of  Alex- 
andria it  was  difficult  for  either  the  Messianic  hope  or  the 
apocalyptic  frame  of  mind  to  survive.  Philo's  Messiah  is 
a  mere  shadow  that  has  no  place  in  his  system  of  thought. 
The  hope  that  a  deceased  teacher,  once  known  and  loved, 
would  come  back  to  earth  as  the  Messiah  might  fill  with  en- 
thusiasm the  men  of  Galilee,  but  not  profoundly  affect 
either  Greek  or  barbarian.  In  the  Hellenistic  world  this 
exotic  plant  would  have  drooped  and  died  but  for  Philo's 
thought.  The  influence  of  his  mind  is  already  felt  in  the 
Pauline  literature.  The  political  idea  has  vanished;  the 
apocalyptic  conception  is  gradually  disappearing.  It  is  the 
celestial,  archetypal  man,  the  medium  of  creation,  revela- 
tion, and  redemption,  the  image  and  effulgence  of  the  in- 
effable glory,  the  Son  of  God  in  a  Greek  metaphysical  sense, 
that  dominates.  In  the  Fourth  Gospel  the  Logos  of  Philo 
has  become  flesh ;  the  Messiah  is  transformed  into  1 1  the  only 
begotten  Son ; ' n  the  pageant  in  the  sky  gives  place  to  a  mys- 
tic fellowship ;  the  resurrection  is  a  spiritual  experience. 

1  This  reading  in  John  i,  18,  is  found  in  Codex  Alexandrinus,  a 
number  of  late  uncials,  all  cursive  MSS.  but  one,  the  Latin  versions, 
the  Curetonian,  the  Philoxenian,  the  Palestinian  Lectionary,  the 
Georgian,  the  Armenian,  the  Slavic,  the  Anglo-Saxon,  some  MSS.  of 
the  Ethiopic  and  the  Arabic,  Athanasius,  Chrysostom  and  the  Latin 
fathers.  It  is  without  a  rival  in  the  Occident  and  practically  so  in 
the  Orient  until  the  fifth  century,  while  it  is  known  in  Alexandria  in 
the  days  of  Origen.  On  the  other  hand,  an  important  group  of  wit- 
nesses to  the  text  give  the  reading  '  only  begotten  God. '  Among  these 
are  Codex  Vaticanus,  Codex  Sinaiticus,  Codex  Ephraemi,  Codex  Par- 
isianus  62,  the  cursive  MS.  33,  the  Peshita,  the  margin  of  the  Phil- 
oxenian, the  Coptic,  some  MSS.  of  the  Ethiopic  and  a  host  of  patristic 
writers  from  Clement  of  Alexandria  on,  Arian  as  well  as  orthodox. 
Bousset  may  be  right  in  thinking  that  all  of  these  represent  the  same 
Egyptian  text  edited  by  Hesychius  (Theologische  Bundschau,  October, 
1903,  p.  436)  and  that  in  Egypt  the  original  'son'  was  corrected  into 
'God.'  Unfortunately  this  passage  is  lost  in  the  Sinaitic  Syriac. 
Modern  editors  and  commentators  are  of  divided  counsel.  The  sug- 
gestion of  Semler  and  Schultz  that  the  text  originally  read  simply 
'the  only  begotten'  has  not  won  any  recognition.  Tregelles,  Hort, 
Westcott,  a  majority  of  English  revisers,  Harnack,  B.  Weiss,  O.  Holtz- 
mann  and  H.  J.  Holtzmann  have  argued  in  favor  of  the  reading 


14  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZAEETH 

It  was  important  that  the  Old  Testament  should  be  saved, 
and  the  historic  continuity  preserved.  But  the  cost  was 
great.  The  infallible  authority  of  the  Scriptures  might  be 
strongly  maintained.  But  a  method  that  allows  the  inter- 
preter to  read  into  the  Bible  the  theistic  speculations,  the 
psychology  and  the  ethics  of  Greek  philosophy,  shifts  in  re- 
ality the  seat  of  authority.  Ultimately  it  is  no  longer  the 
thought  of  the  Biblical  writers  that  is  to  him  authoritative, 
but  the  thought  that  he  himself,  with  undoubted  sincerity, 
has  imported  into  the  text.  Under  ecclesiastical  pressure 
this  thought  may  be  the  officially  recognized  system  of  doc- 
trine. Where  a  deeper  religious  experience  loosens  the  hold 
of  hierarchical  power,  and  leads  the  thirsty  soul  to  the  foun- 
tains of  living  water  in  the  Scriptures,  it  finds  there  pre- 
cisely what,  on  other  grounds,  it  believes  to  be  true.  The 
highest  authority  of  the  mystic  is  his  own  inner  conscious- 
ness. But  this  subjectivity  is  the  eclipse  of  dogma. 

It  was  the  transformation  of  the  coming  Messiah  into  a 
god  that  rendered  the  Christ  cult  possible.  Without  a  com- 
plete apotheosis,  the  world  would  not  have  been  won.  It 
was  nothing  less  than  a  god  that  the  worshiping  heart  de- 
manded. The  second  person  of  the  Trinity,  the  divine  be- 
ing through  whom  the  universe  was  made  and  the  redemp- 
tion effected,  met  this  need.  The  episode  of  his  humanity, 
the  earthly  life  of  Jesus,  sank  into  the  background.  It  was 
but  the  temporary  manifestation  in  the  flesh  of  a  divine 
personality  to  overcome  the  powers  of  evil.  His  battles 
with  them  became  a  spectacle.  At  sacred  seasons  the  suf- 
ferings of  the  new  deity  were  set  forth  dramatically,  as  had 
been  those  of  Osiris,  Tammuz  and  Dionysus  in  the  past. 
Yet  even  in  a  god  it  is  the  human  qualities  that  are  most 
fascinating.  The  very  cult  led  the  worshipers  back  to  a 
manhood  that  invited  imitation.  The  more  earnestly  this 

'God.'  (See  especially  Hort,  Two  Dissertations,  1876,  pp.  1-72). 
Alford,  Tischendorf,  Ezra  Abbott,  Scrivener,  Schaff,  Nestle,  Bousset 
have  accepted  the  reading  'only  begotten  son.'  (See  especially  Ezra 
Abbott  in  Bibliottieca  Sacra,  October,  1861,  and  Unitarian  Review, 
June,  1875). 


THE  DECLINE  OF  DOGMA  15 

was  undertaken,  the  more  real  became  the  fellowship  of  his 
sufferings,  the  more  marked  was  the  return  from  the  Christ 
of  dogma  to  the  Jesus  of  history. 

Among  the  independent  movements  of  Christian  thought 
that  were  finally  suppressed,  none,  perhaps,  was  of  greater 
importance  than  Gnosticism.  Large  were  the  contributions 
that  the  Gnostics  made  to  the  growing  Catholic  church.  Al- 
ready the  epistolary  literature  of  the  New  Testament  and 
the  Fourth  Gospel  reveal  the  attraction  and  influence  of 
Gnostic  thought  as  well  as  an  unmistakable  attitude  of  hos- 
tility and  fear.  Some  of  the  works  of  Gnostics  on  which  the 
Church  set  its  seal  of  approval  were  the  selection  of  a  canon 
of  Christian  Scriptures,  the  enriching  of  the  cult  by  hymns, 
formulas  and  new  sacraments,  the  establishment  of  a  cate- 
chumenate,  and  the  development  of  a  philosophy  of  emana- 
tion. Many  of  the  contentions  of  the  Gnostics  rejected  by 
the  Church  were  truer  than  the  views  it  adopted.  Men  like 
Valentinus,  Basilides,  Marcion  and  Ptolemy  were  right  in 
holding  that  there  is  a  vast  difference  between  the  concep- 
tion of  God  in  the  Mosaic  legislation  and  that  presented  by 
Jesus,  that  a  god  who  fashions  man  out  of  clay,  repents  of 
his  work,  betrays  ignorance,  becomes  angry,  eats  flesh,  de- 
sires animal  sacrifices,  and  fights  for  Israel  against  other 
nations,  is  more  truly  designated  as  "the  god  of  the  Jews" 
than  as  "the  father  of  mankind. "  If,  for  want  of  such  a 
training  as  the  synagogue  provided,  these  thinkers  some- 
times failed  to  understand  the  Hebrew  records,  their  own 
education  fitted  them  to  see  more  clearly  than  even  the  most 
radical  Jewish  Christian  the  moral  and  religious  differences 
between  the  Law  and  the  Gospel.  It  is  possible  that  the  loss 
of  critical  insight  the  Church  sustained  by  adopting  a  less 
discriminating  view  of  the  Old  Testament  was  made  good 
by  a  greater  freedom  from  moral  excrescences.  Although 
the  denunciations  in  the  Pastoral  Epistles  and  the  accounts 
in  Irenaeus  should  no  doubt  be  taken  with  considerable  cau- 
tion, and  such  works  as  the  Pistis  Sophia,  the  Books  of  Yeu, 
and  the  hymns  betray  no  laxity  of  morals,  it  is  not  improb- 
able that  this  movement,  like  the  Pauline,  had  an  incidental 


16  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZAEETH 

tendency  to  lead  to  lawlessness.  But  its  eager  search  for 
knowledge  and  its  spirit  of  independence,  shown  in  numer- 
ous sects,  precluded  fixity  of  doctrine.1 

What  is  true  of  the  Gnostics,  applies  in  many  respects  to 
all  the  dissenting  bodies  condemned  as  heretical.  Their 
strength  lay  in  a  courageous  protest  against  doctrinal  stag- 
nation, and  a  demand  for  a  deeper  knowledge  and  a  holier 
life,  their  weakness  in  an  asceticism  that  could  not  be  en- 
dured, a  censorious  and  schismatic  spirit,  or  an  exaggerated 
independence.  It  is  to  be  regretted  that  the  doctrinal  views 
of  men  like  Theodotion,  Noetus,  Paul  of  Samosata,  and  Sa- 
bellius  should  be  so  imperfectly  known.  Whether  Arian- 
ism,  if  unchecked,  would  have  led  to  a  monotheism  like  the 
Jewish  or  Muhammadan,  with  an  Ebionitish  Christology,  or 
developed  into  a  polytheism  more  marked  than  the  practical 
tritheism  of  the  Church,  is  a  question  not  easily  answered. 
It  was  a  significant  protest  against  the  doctrine  that  was 
destined  to  win  the  palm  of  victory,  and  it  forced  a  defini- 
tion of  the  "three  persons"  and  the  "two  natures"  bearing 
in  itself  the  germs  of  destruction. 

It  is  a  serious  misfortune  that  the  attacks  upon  Christian 
dogma  by  outsiders,  such  as  Celsus  and  Porphyry,  have 
come  down  to  us  only  in  fragments.  What  has  been  pre- 
served shows  the  truly  scientific  character  of  many  of  their 
arguments.  How  widely  they  won  the  approval  of  thought- 
ful men  within  the  Church,  we  cannot  know.  But  it  is  not 
likely  that  they  would  have  caused  such  consternation  among 
the  apologists,  had  there  been  no  signs  of  danger.  The  time 
had  not  arrived,  however,  for  the  acceptance  of  such  critical 
results  without  jeopardizing  more  valuable  possessions. 
The  negative  truths  they  perceived  were  of  less  importance 
than  the  positive  convictions  they  combated.  The  Chris- 
tian system  survived,  not  by  virtue  of  the  errors  these  phil- 
osophers pointed  out,  but  because  of  the  larger  truths  they 
failed  to  see.  It  was  not  expedient  for  the  world  to  go  back 

1  On  the  significance  of  the  Gnostic  movement  and  the  history  of  its 
gradual  recognition,  see  Excursus  A. 


THE  DECLINE  OF  DOGMA  17 

from  the  worship  of  Christ  with  what  it  held  of  future  good 
to  the  gods  of  Hellas  and  Rome. 

The  Middle  Ages  were  not  a  period  of  the  upbuilding  of 
dogma.  This  product  of  the  Greek  spirit  working  with 
Jewish  material  was  completed.  But  the  creed-making  con- 
tinued. Kelt  and  German  and  Slav,  even  though  converted 
to  Christianity,  could  only  see  the  articles  of  faith  through 
their  own  eyes.  No  baptismal  water  could  wash  away  the 
thought  of  ages.  Their  Christ  naturally  bore  many  a  fea- 
ture borrowed  from  Hesu,  Balder,  or  Bogh.  The  most  dili- 
gent and  skilful  indoctrination  was  not  able  to  erase  the  in- 
fluence of  foreign  religious  conceptions.  From  his  heaven 
the  new  god  must  descend  to  fight  his  people's  battles,  as 
had  the  gods  of  their  fathers.  This  Christ  was  as  dif- 
ferent from  the  Eternal  Son  of  the  Symbolum  Nicaenum,  as 
were  the  metaphysicians  presenting  their  subtle  arguments 
for  or  against  the  homoousion  in  the  streets  of  Alexandria 
from  the  rough  and  valiant  knights  going  forth,  sword  in 
hand,  to  conquer  lands  and  nations  for  their  celestial  king. 
The  claims  of  his  vicegerent  on  earth  were  in  keeping  with 
this  martial  spirit. 

Through  this  spirit  the  Christian  nations  were  brought 
into  conflict  with  another  aggressive  religion,  and  into  con- 
tact with  a  civilization  in  some  respects  decidedly  superior. 
From  the  great  centres  of  Muslim  learning  at  Toledo  and 
Seville,  Kairwan  and  Fostat,  Baghdad  and  Damascus, 
streams  of  new  intellectual  life  issued  forth.  Through  vis- 
iting scholars  and  returning  crusaders,  through  the  court  of 
Frederic  II  at  Palermo,  through  the  mediation  of  the  Jews, 
Christian  Europe  became  to  some  extent  acquainted  with  a 
highly  developed  science  of  nature,  a  philosophy  often 
wholly  emancipated  from  the  bondage  of  dogma,  and  a  his- 
torical investigation  clinging  closely  and  critically  to  the 
facts.  Perhaps  the  most  important  response  to  this  enliv- 
ening touch  was  the  philosophy  of  nominalism.  It  drew 
the  mind  away  from  the  conception  of  universal  terms  as 
real,  and  bade  it  look  upon  reality  as  inherent  in  the  things 
themselves.  Classes  and  categories  were  declared  to  be  mere 
2 


18  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZAEETH 

abstractions  of  thought;  the  things  that  can  be  seen  and 
made  objects  of  study  were  proclaimed  to  be  the  realities. 
A  heaven  full  of  imaginary  objects,  types  and  patterns,  was 
shattered;  an  earth  full  of  unobserved  individual  things 
challenged  attention.  If  this  philosophy  was  in  a  degree 
the  fruit  of  the  scientific  spirit  engendered  through  Muslim 
influence,  it  became  even  more  markedly  the  cause  of  the 
further  development  of  science.  For  historical  criticism 
the  time  had  not  yet  come.  The  veiled  efforts  of  Abraham 
ibn  Ezra,  the  Jewish  philosopher  of  Toledo,  proved  abortive. 

The  danger  to  dogma  from  nominalism  was  only  equalled 
by  that  threatening  from  mysticism.  If  Francis  of  Assisi, 
Tauler,  the  author  of  Theologia  Germanica,  and  Thomas  a 
Kempis  still  moved  within  the  sphere  of  the  accepted  sys- 
tem, many  of  "the  brethren  of  the  common  life"  not  only 
appealed,  as  Gerhard  Groote  had  done,  from  patristic  and 
scholastic  authority  to  that  of  the  Gospel  itself,  but  went  so 
far  as  to  reject  the  doctrine  of  the  Church  on  essential 
points,  as  in  the  case  of  the  sacraments.  The  abandonment 
of  external  authority  is  the  inevitable  result  of  any  deepen- 
ing of  man's  religious  life. 

Erasmus  and  Luther,  Zwingli  and  Calvin,  all  show  the 
influence  of  mysticism  and  its  tendency  to  undermine  estab- 
lished doctrines.  They  indeed  left  untouched  the  Christ  of 
the  ecumenic  creeds,  and  the  authority  of  the  Scriptures  was 
made  the  formal  principle  of  the  reformation.  But  this 
formal  principle  was  seriously  affected  by  the  material  prin- 
ciple, justification  by  faith,  which  Luther  applied  as  a  stand- 
ard of  canonicity;  and  the  great  reformer,  with  his  warm 
human  heart,  who  dared  to  approach  the  divine  without 
priestly  mediation,  found  in  his  Christ  a  richer  humanity. 
His  noble  independence  has  left  in  German  soil  a  legacy  of 
incalculable  worth.  Calvin,  easily  foremost  among  the  re- 
formers as  an  exegete,  accepted  the  Catholic  Christology, 
but  his  more  literal  method  of  interpretation,  his  desire  to 
put  the  legislation  of  the  Bible  to  a  practical  test  in  polit- 
ical life,  his  lack  of  faith  in  salvation  by  sacramental  magic, 
and  his  broad  historic  outlook  from  the  view-point  of  eternal 


THE  DECLINE  OF  DOGMA  19 

decrees  blazoned  the  path  of  rational  Bible  study,  historical 
criticism  and  social  progress. 

The  fullest  development  of  these  tendencies  was  reached 
in  the  Baptist  churches.  Here  a  conscious  spiritual  experi- 
ence, not  a  creed  or  a  sacrament,  was  made  the  basis  of  fel- 
lowship. The  supreme  authority  of  the  inner  light  was  rec- 
ognized. Absolute  liberty  of  conscience  and  non-interfer- 
ence by  civil  society  in  matters  of  religion  were  demanded, 
and  the  principle  of  voluntary  association  was  maintained. 
How  subversive  of  dogma  this  general  attitude  was,  is  well 
seen  in  the  case  of  Johannes  Denck,1  one  of  the  profoundest 
thinkers  of  the  sixteenth  century.  He  argued  the  greater 
authority  of  the  inner  light,  the  immediate  vision  of  truth, 
from  the  fact  that  only  a  small  part  of  the  human  race  had 
any  knowledge  of  the  Scriptures;  he  believed  in  the  final 
salvation  of  all  men  and  freely  proclaimed  this  conviction ; 
he  rejected  the  piacular  conception  of  Jesus'  death  and  de- 
clared him  to  be  a  prophet.  His  views  were  widely  adopted 
and  he  was  held  in  highest  esteem  in  all  the  churches.  In 
1550  sixty  delegates  from  about  forty  Baptist  churches  in 
Italy,  Switzerland  and  Austria  met  in  Venice  to  settle  the 
question  whether  Christ  were  God  or  man.  Thrice  during 
the  meeting  the  Lord's  Supper  was  celebrated.  After  forty 
days  of  earnest  discussion  an  almost  unanimous  decision 
was  reached  against  the  deity  of  Christ,  against  the  reality 
of  good  and  evil  angels,  against  the  immortality  of  the  god- 
less and  a  place  of  future  punishment,  in  favor  of  soul- 
sleeping,  and  against  the  propitiatory  nature  of  Christ's 
suffering.2  Others,  like  Balthasar  Hubmaier,  no  doubt  ad- 

1  Cf .  especially  Ludwig  Keller,  Ein  Apostel  der  Wiedertaufer,  1882  j 
also  Eichard  Heath,  Anabaptism,  1895. 

2  See  copies  of  the  records  of  the  Inquisition  published  by  Comba, 
Rivista  Christiana,  1885,  and  the  accounts  given  by  Benrath,  Studien 
und  Kritiken,  1885,  p.  20,  and  by  Comba,  I  nostri  protestanti,  1897, 
II,  488  fit'.     A  popular  account  is  given  by  Newman,  A  History  of 
the  Baptist  Churches  in  the  United  States,  1894,  p.  34  f ,  and  a  fuller 
statement  in  A   History  of  Antipedobaptism,   1899.     Unfortunately 
Newman  does  not  quote  his  sources  in  a  manner  that  makes  it  possible 
for  the  reader  to  verify  his  statements,  and  some  of  the  most  remark- 


20  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZAEETH 

hered  more  closely  to  traditional  lines.  But  there  was  no 
dogma.  Liberty  prevailed.  It  produced  a  gentleness  and 
dignity  of  language  and  demeanor  that  contrasted  agree- 
ably with  the  vulgarity  of  speech  and  harshness  of  judg- 
ment that  mar  the  memory  of  so  many  great  men  of  the 
period.  Nor  can  those  who  without  a  murmur  suffered 
martyrdom  at  the  stake  or  by  drowning  be  charged  with 
want  of  firm  conviction.  Affiliated  with  this  radical  move- 
ment were  Michael  Servetus,  burned  by  Calvin  for  his  views 
on  the  Trinity  and  infant  baptism,  and  Andreas  Bodens£ein 
Carlstadt,  the  great  literary  critic. 

The  mighty  spiritual  impulses  of  the  reformation  seem 
to  have  gradually  spent  their  force.  An  apparently  barren 
orthodoxism  adorned  itself  with  Luther's  name,  without 
possessing  the  power  of  his  faith ;  an  estimate  of  the  Bible 
more  fictitious  than  ever,  and  a  new  incrustation  of  dogma 
temporarily  obscured  the  liberalizing  tendencies  of  Calvin's 
thought ;  the  abuse  of  liberty  at  Miinster  cast  discredit  on  a 
fair  name,  and  scattered  the  precious  possessions  once  held 
together  in  the  bond  of  peace  among  many  sects.  Yet  the 
apparent  retrogression  was  probably  the  only  way  of  pre- 
venting the  new  type  of  religious  life  from  flowing  back  into 
the  channels  of  the  re-invigorated  rather  than  thoroughly 
reformed  Catholic  church,  and  of  gathering  ethical  vigor 
for  future  advances. 

A  vantage-ground  for  critical  work  was  discovered  in  the 
mother-church  in  her  recognition  of  a  sifting  process 
through  a  long  succession  of  living  authorities.  Where 
Rome  had  not  yet  spoken,  critics  might  speak.  The  author- 
ity of  the  Church,  while  never  at  variance  with  the  true  sense 
of  the  Scriptures,  was  above  every  human  interpretation  of 
them;  and  they  might  be  freely  examined  so  long  as  her 
authority  was  not  infringed.  Thus  members  of  the  Society 
of  Jesus,  like  Bento  Pereira  and  Jacques  Bonfrere,  felt  free 
to  suggest  post-Mosaic  material  in  the  Pentateuch;  and 
fathers  of  the  Oratorio  in  Paris,  like  Jean  Morin,  Richard 

able  facts  showing  the  critical  insight  of  the  Italian  Baptists  are  en- 
tirely overshadowed  or  omitted. 


THE  DECLINE  OF  DOGMA  21 

Simon  and  Charles  Frangois  Houbigant,  went  far  in  ad- 
vance of  Protestant  scholars  in  textual  and  literary  criti- 
cism. How  circumscribed  the  freedom  of  even  eminent 
scholars  in  the  Reformed  church  was  in  the  beginning  of 
the  seventeenth  century,  the  history  of  Johannes  Piscator 
(Fischer)  shows.  The  often  remarkably  sane  exegesis  of 
the  Herborn  Bible  found  toleration  only  in  Nassau,  where 
heretics  in  mathematics,  physics  and  astronomy  also  were 
safe. 

A  new  conception  of  the  universe,  of  incalculable  signifi- 
cance for  the  destiny  of  dogma,  developed  through  the  dis- 
coveries of  Copernicus,  Brahe,  Bruno,  Galileo,  Huyghens 
and  Newton.  In  England  the  new  science  found  its  most 
generous  welcome  and  exercised  its  widest  influence.  Its 
bearing  on  theology  became  manifest  in  the  works  of 
Thomas  Hobbes  and  of  the  deists.  Among  these  Charles 
Blount,  John  Toland  and  Anthony  Collins  probably  did  the 
greatest  service.  Blount  pointed  out  the  inconsistency  of 
the  Biblical  cosmogony  with  the  Copernican  theory ;  Toland 
called  attention  to  the  radical  differences  of  thought  in  the 
apostolic  church;  Collins  proved  the  Maccabaean  origin  of 
the  book  of  Daniel,  and  searchingly  examined  the  supposed 
Messianic  prophecies.  A  curious  instance  of  how  a  new 
view  of  the  world  may  be  read  into  the  Bible  by  the  alle- 
gorical method  to  the  utter  extinction  of  dogma  was  pre- 
sented by  Thomas  Woolston.  The  real  merits  of  these  Eng- 
lish thinkers  should  not  be  denied.  A  fatal  inability  to  ex- 
plain the  growth  and  maintenance  of  the  Christian  system 
except  by  priestcraft  and  deception,  and  a  consequent  acer- 
bity of  temper,  degenerating  into  cynicism  in  Bolingbroke, 
constituted  their  greatest  weakness,  and  limited  their  capac- 
ity to  gain  permanent  recognition  for  the  truths  they  so 
clearly  perceived.  On  the  other  hand,  its  very  freedom 
from  the  characteristics  of  deistic  warfare  and  its  profund- 
ity of  thought  prevented  for  some  time  David  Hume  V  con- 
tribution to  religious  thought  from  receiving  an  attention 
commensurate  with  its  intrinsic  importance.  Meanwhile  the 

1  The  Natural  History  of  Religion,  1757. 


22  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZARETH 

leaven  of  mysticism  was  at  work.  The  Baptist  churches  in 
Poland  were  quietist  and  Unitarian.  When  they  were 
driven  out,  they  found  refuge  in  Holland  and  in  England. 
They  helped  to  create  the  atmosphere  in  which  Arminianism 
grew  up.  They  contributed  largely  to  the  Socinian,  Uni- 
tarian and  Universalist  movements,  and  paved  the  way  for 
Quakerism.  The  latter  was  perhaps  the  most  potent  spirit- 
ual force  of  the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth  centuries. 
While  the  quietism  of  Jean  de  Labadie,  Anna  Maria  van 
Schurmann,  Madame  de  Guyon  and  Fenelon,  and  the  piet- 
ism of  Spener,  Francke,  Dippel,  Edelmann  and  Zinzendorf, 
may  ultimately  have  had  an  independent  origin,  not  due  to 
the  missionary  zeal  of  the  Quaker,  the  impact  of  the  Eng- 
lish movement  is  plainly  visible,  and  its  effect  on  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  world  was  very  great.1  It  was  largely  through  the 
faith  and  patience  of  her  Quaker  saints  that  England 
learned  the  principle  of  religious  toleration ;  it  was  William 
Penn,  the  Quaker,  and  Roger  Williams,  the  Baptist,  who  es- 
tablished in  America  a  still  broader  religious  liberty. 

Deism  and  pietism  alike  tended  to  undermine  the  dog- 
matic structure.  Jean  Leclerc,  already  affected  by  Spi- 
noza's Tractatus  Beligio-politicus  (1670),  came  under  the 
influence  of  Newton,  Locke  and  Collins,  and  left  an  impres- 
sion upon  the  susceptible  remonstrant  body  too  deep  to  be 
removed  by  tardy  caution.  In  the  Wolfenbuttler  Frag- 
mente,  published  anonymously  by  Lessing,  after  the  author 's 
death,  in  1774  and  1777,  Hermann  Samuel  Reimarus,  a  man 
of  vast  erudition  and  keen  insight,  but  somewhat  lacking  in 
delicacy  and  vital  religious  interest,  revealed  the  influence  of 

*Cf.  Bruno  Bauer,  Einfluss  des  englischen  QuakertJiums  auf  die 
deutsche  Cultur,  1878.  This  exceedingly  thoughtful  work  suffers 
somewhat  from  a  too  violent  reaction  against  the  narrow  sectarianism 
that  twenty-five  years  ago  characterized  most  church  historians, 
whether  their  sect  was  large  or  small.  If  at  times  he  exaggerates  the 
influence  of  individual  mystics,  his  estimate  of  pietism  is  in  the  main 
as  just  as  it  is  generous.  It  was  particularly  needful  at  a  time  when 
theological  thought  began  to  be  dominated  by  Eitschl,  who  had  no 
eye  but  for  the  eccentricities  of  mysticism,  and  so  signally  failed 
to  appreciate  its  ethical  and  religious  value. 


THE  DECLINE  OF  DOGMA 


the  English  school.  Poets  like  Lessing,  Herder  and  Goethe, 
and  philosophers  like  Wolf  and  Kant  also  contributed  pow- 
erfully to  the  broadening  of  the  religious  outlook.  In 
France,  Voltaire,  Rousseau,  Diderot  and  others  expounded 
the  tenets  of  deism.  Voltaire,  who  knew  most  intimately 
English  life  and  thought,  unfortunately  copied  some  of  the 
most  objectionable  features  of  the  deistic  polemics.  His 
famous  phrase,  Ecrasez  I'infame!  was  indeed  not  hurled 
against  Christ,  but  against  the  Catholic  church,  and  it  may 
even  appear  mild  in  comparison  with  the  intemperate  lan- 
guage in  which  Protestant  theologians  were  wont  to  indulge 
when  speaking  of  this  church.  But  there  seems  at  times  to 
be  a  malice  in  his  satire  and  a  lack  of  fairness  in  his  judg- 
ment that  could  not  but  affect  his  own  vision,  and  prevent 
men  from  accepting  even  the  truth  he  offered.  A  deeper 
earnestness  and  a  loftier  purpose,  though  with  serious  de- 
fects, characterized  Thomas  Paine,  whose  "Age  of  Reason" 
did  so  much,  on  both  sides  of  the  Atlantic,  to  destroy  the 
foundations  of  dogma. 

More  or  less  consciously  pietism  marched  to  the  same  goal. 
When  * ' The  Lord  has  revealed  this  to  me, "  or  "It  seems  to 
me/'  takes  the  place  of  "It  is  written,"  rationalism  is  un- 
avoidable. How  shall  a  man  determine,  whether  a  convic- 
tion in  his  mind  is  the  authoritative  utterance  within  him 
of  a  spirit  not  himself,  or  a  subjective  judgment  reached  by 
processes  of  ratiocination  ?  When  truth  is  no  longer  meas- 
ured by  external  standards,  how  can  reason  be  prevented 
from  ultimately  proclaiming  its  supreme  authority?  The 
transition  may  be  watched  in  Nicolas  Zinzendorf,  in  Carl 
Friedrich  Bardt,  in  Johann  Salomo  Semler,  "the  father  of 
criticism, ' '  in  Johann  David  Michaelis.  The  rationalism  of 
H.  E.  G.  Paulus  still  hesitated  to  touch  traditional  views 
concerning  authorship  or  to  resort  to  mythology;  it  was  a 
consistent,  and  therefore  onesided  and  mistaken,  effort  to 
explain  all  miracles  as  based  on  actual  occurrences.1  His 

1  The  greatest  weakness  of  the  rationalistic  school  was  its  lack  of  his- 
toric sense.  It  wanted  to  find  its  own  ideas  in  the  Bible.  Historic 
objectivity  is  an  easier  virtue  to-day,  however,  than  a  hundred  years 


24  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZAEETH 

pupil,  W.  M.  L.  De  Wette,  who  applied  both  literary  criti- 
cism and  a  mythical  theory  to  the  Old  Testament,  yearned  to 
harmonize  a  living  faith  with  a  scientific  method.1  Schleier- 
macher  drew  from  Herrnhut  his  warm  piety,  his  conviction 
that  "  it  is  the  heart  that  makes  the  theologian, ' '  his  inclina- 
tion to  pour  the  new  wine  into  the  old  bottles,  and  his  recog- 
nition of  the  rights  of  criticism.  Similarly  a  deep  mysti- 
cism, an  immense  wealth  of  ideas,  and  a  luminous  haze  of  lan- 
guage characterized  Hegel.  To  this  trio  of  Berlin  teachers 
the  emancipation  of  religious  thought  in  Germany  is  largely 
due.  Among  their  disciples  were  C.  P.  W.  Gramberg,  Wil- 
helm  Vatke  and  J.  F.  L.  George,  who  first  drew  the  outlines 
of  the  now  generally  accepted  course  of  Israel's  religious 
development;  David  Friedrich  Strauss,  whose  epoch-mak- 
ing work2  recognized  the  unhistorical  character  of  the 
Fourth  Gospel  and  the  mythical  element  in  the  New  Testa- 
ment; Ferdinand  Christian  Baur,  who  discerned  the  con- 
flict between  Jewish  and  Pauline  Christianity  and  the  his- 
torical background  in  the  second  century  for  a  large  part 
of  the  Pauline  literature ;  and  Bruno  Bauer,  who  sought  to 
establish  a  relation  of  the  entire  Pauline  literature  to  Rome 
analogous  to  that  of  the  Johannine  literature  to  Alexandria. 
In  the  Hegelian  philosophy  the  principle  of  development 
according  to  ascertainable  laws  was  enunciated.  But  the 
laws  as  yet  most  clearly  recognized  by  natural  science  were 
those  of  mechanics.  Their  application  to  the  movements 

ago ;  and  the  ordinary  treatment  of  rationalism  itself  shows  that  it  is 
by  no  means  too  abundant.  Hermann  Miiller's  articles  Zur  Wiirdi- 
gung  des  Eatlonalismus  in  Protestantische  Monatshefte,  July  and 
August,  1901,  are  encouraging. 

1  The  influence  of  Eichhorn  and  De  Wette  was  felt  even  in  America, 
where  George  E.  Noyes  published  a  critical  essay  on  the  Messianic 
prophecies  in  1834.     John  G.  Palfrey  wrote  some  excellent  "Lectures 
on  Jewish  History  and  Antiquities"  in  1840.     Theodore  Parker  trans- 
lated and  annotated  De  Wette 's  Introduction  to  the  Old  Testament 
in  1840,  and  Ealph  Waldo  Emerson,  in  his  famous  address  to  the  Har- 
vard Divinity  School  in  1838  and  through  his  later  essays,  presented 
the  best  thought  of  the  period. 

2  Das  Leben  Jesu,  1835. 


THE  DECLINE  OF  DOGMA  25 

of  life  in  human  society,  however  justifiable,  could  not  at 
first  escape  a  certain  crudeness  and  avoid  leaving  the  im- 
pression of  artificiality.  The  day  was  fast  approaching 
when  the  laws  of  evolution  in  the  realm  of  organic  life 
should  be  more  distinctly1  seen  and  formulated  by  Darwin, 
Huxley,  Haeckel  and  Spencer,  and  the  discovery  fertilize 
every  field  of  human  research.  But  before  it  came  a  reac- 
tion set  in.  The  results  must  be  tested.  Not  only  apolo- 
gists for  traditional  views,  but  also  firm  believers  in  literary 
and  historical  criticism,  addressed  themselves  to  the  task. 
The  vigorous  and  uncompromising  defense  of  tradition  by 
Hengstenberg,  Havernick  and  Keil  was  not  without  effect, 
and  the  conservatism  of  Neander,  the  subtle  and  allegoriz- 
ing exegesis  of  J.  C.  K.  Hofmann,  and  the  mystical  inter- 
pretation of  J.  T.  Beck  exercised  a  wide  'influence.  More 
important,  however,  was  the  rejection  of  many  positions 
held  by  De  Wette,  Gramberg,  George,  Vatke  and  Reuss  on 
the  one  hand,  and  Baur,  Schwegler,  Zeller,  Strauss  and 
Bruno  Bauer  on  the  other,  by  men  who  were  their  peers  in 
independence  of  thought  as  well  as  in  learning.  Heinrich 
Ewald,  a  disciple  of  Eichhorn,  but  his  superior  as  an  Orient- 
alist, and  gifted  with  a  finer  poetic  appreciation,  protested 
against  the  submergence  of  personality  in  the  struggle  of 
forces  and  tendencies.  He  restored  the  order  of  "the  Law 
and  the  Prophets,"  and  threw  back  the  Fourth  Gospel  into 
the  apostolic  age.  August  Dillmann,  great  as  a  philologist 

xBuffon,  in  his  Histoire  naturelle,  1749-1804,  had  thrown  out  im- 
portant suggestions,  and  Lamarck,  in  his  Philosophic  zoologique,  1809, 
had  already  formulated  one  of  the  most  important  laws  of  evolution. 
It  is  interesting  to  observe  that  in  the  same  year  a  pastor  in  Dobbeln 
in  Brunswick,  G.  Ballenstedt,  published  in  Henke's  Museum  fur  Ee- 
ligionswissenschaft,  1809,  p.  570  ft',  an  article  entitled  Umriss  einer 
auf  Thatsachen  und  Naturgesetze  sich  grilndenden  Geogonie,  in  which, 
following  Spallanzani  and  Blumenbach,  he  not  only  affirmed  a  belief 
in  spontaneous  generation,  but  laid  down  a  remarkable  system  of  or- 
derly development  of  life  on  the  planet.  Among  the  earlier  forerun- 
ners none  was  greater  than  Lamarck.  Herbert  Spencer  in  some  re- 
spects anticipated  Darwin,  but  Darwin's  Origin  of  Species,  1859,  was 
epoch-making. 


26  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZAEETH 

conscientious  as  an  interpreter,  continued  the  protest,  in 
new  surroundings,  suspicious  of  * '  an  evolution  along  straight 
lines,"  though  yielding  point  after  point  to  love  of  truth, 
and   even   Theodor   Noldeke,    the   most   eminent   Semitic 
scholar  of  the  century,  and  an  acute  literary  critic,  main- 
tained for  some  time,  against  Graf  and  Kuenen,  the  pre-ex- 
ilic  origin  of  the  priestly  legislation.     Karl  Hase  leaned 
again,  though  somewhat  doubtfully,  on  the  Fourth  Gospel 
as  a  historic  source,  and  C.  H.  Weisse  found  it  necessary 
to  assume  at  least  a  post-mortem  appearance  of  the  spirit  of 
Jesus  to  account  for  the  doctrine  of  the  resurrection.     Such 
masters  of  New  Testament  exegesis  as  Theodor  Keim,1  Carl 
Weizsacker,  J.  H.  Scholten,  Adolf  Hilgenfeld,  Otto  Pfleid- 
erer  and  Heinrich  Holtzmann  adhered  indeed  faithfully  to 
all  that  was  essential  in  the  position  of  the  Tubingen  school. 
But  on  literary  questions  they  surrendered  many  of  the  con- 
tentions of  Baur,  and  opposed  some  of  the  characteristic 
views  of  Strauss  and  Bruno  Bauer.    Not  seldom  their  devi- 
ations from  Baur  marked  decided  steps  forward,  as  when 
some  of  them  discarded  the  Johannine  authorship  of  the 
Apocalypse.     Yet  this  rejection  of  a  chief  corner-stone  of 
the  Tubingen  structure  appeared  to  these  scholars  them- 
selves and  others  less  significant  than  the  fact  that  they 
deemed  it  possible  to  assign  to  Paul  three  or  four  more 
epistles  than  Baur  had  been  able  to  do.     The  differences  on 
details  of  criticism  between  the  school  of  Ewald  and  the 
school  of  De  Wette,  between  the  present  survivors  and  the 
founders  of  the  Tubingen  school,  were  of  little  moment  in 
comparison  with  the  underlying  unity  of  method,  mental 
attitude  and  even  results.     But  the  impression  of  a  reaction 
was  important,  as  it  tended  to  increase  confidence  in  the 
carefulness  and  integrity  of  Biblical  scholarship  and  to  cre- 
ate a  more  generous  hospitality  to  critical  study  among  the- 
ologians in  different  lands.2 

1Keim's  Geschichte  Jesu  von  Nazara,  1867,  is  perhaps  the  most 
learned  Life  of  Jesus  that  has  been  published.  It  is  written  in  an 
admirable  spirit. 

"While  the  influence  of  the  "rationalists"  and  De  Wette  scarcely 


THE  DECLINE  OF  DOGMA  27 

A  significant  movement,  also  heralded  as  a  sign  of  reac- 
tion, proceeded  from  Albrecht  Ritschl.  Ritschl  was  funda- 
mentally opposed  to  mysticism,  sought  to  eliminate  philos- 
ophy from  religion  (though  not  without  the  aid  of  Neo- 
Kantianism),  pointed  to  the  objective  revelation  of  God  in 
Christ,  and  insisted  upon  a  practical  transformation  of  in- 
dividual and  social  life  by  Christian  ethics.  He  brought 
James,  I  Peter,  I  John,  Hebrews  and  Luke1  back  to  the  begin- 
nings of  Christian  literature,  caused  an  Essene  Ebionitism 
to  spring  up  after  the  fall  of  Jerusalem,  and  fixed  a  great 
gulf  between  Paul  and  the  Gentile  Christianity  of  the  sec- 
ond century  degraded  by  Greek  philosophy.  His  system 
was  chiefly  elaborated  by  Herrmann ;  his  criticism  was  par- 
ticularly carried  on  by  Harnack.  The  strength  of  Herr- 
mann's contention  for  a  Christo-centric  theology  lay  in  the 
feeling  that  a  human  ideal  is  the  greatest  need  of  the  wor- 
shiper ;  its  weakness,  in  the  uncertainty  concerning  the  ac- 
tual life  of  Jesus  and  the  ideal  which  it  suggests,  when  his- 
torical criticism  is  admitted.  Harnack,  with  admirable 
mastery  of  the  material,  examined  the  external  evidence  of 
the  New  Testament  literature,  rejoiced  in  the  slender  threads 
by  which  it  seemed  possible  to  hang  it  to  its  traditional  au- 
thorship, made  less  confident  use  of  internal  criteria,  and 

affected  any  theologians  in  England  and  America  except  the  Unitari- 
ans, that  of  Ewald  extended  to  teachers  of  theology  and  representa- 
tive exegetes  in  the  most  conservative  Protestant  denominations.  It 
is  sufficient  to  refer  to  Samuel  Davidson,  J.  W.  Colenso,  Rowland 
Williams,  Eobertson  Smith  and  T.  K.  Cheyne  in  England,  Augustus 
JBriggs  and  C.  H.  Toy  in  America.  An  influential  writer  closely  in 
touch  with  German  scholarship,  yet  independent,  was  W.  K.  Cassels, 
the  long  anonymous  author  of  "Supernatural  Religion."  The  im- 
press of  German  thought  may  also  be  traced  to  some  extent  in  the 
Scandinavian  countries.  But  more  frequently  the  reaction  against 
dogma  led  men  of  genius  into  lonely  paths.  This  independence  may 
be  seen  in  Lindgren  's  and  Myrberg  's  treatment  of  the  Old  Testament, 
in  Viktor  Rydberg's  Biblical  criticism,  in  Bostrom's  idealistic  ration- 
alism, in  Pontus  Wikner's  realistic  mysticism,  and  in  Soren  Kirke- 
gaard's  liberalism. 

1  Cf .  Die  Christliche  Lehre  von  der  Bechtfertigung  und  Versohnung, 
1882,  II,  p.  320. 


28  THE  PKOPHET  OF  NAZAKETH 

earnestly  endeavored  to  clear  up  such  important  matters  as 
the  early  history  of  Gnosticism  and  the  origin  of  the  mon- 
archical episcopate.  His  desire  to  vindicate  the  earliest 
possible  date  for  the  New  Testament  books  is  so  manifest 
that  his  conclusions  become,  on  this  account,  all  the  more 
significant.  The  "eye-witnesses,"  James  and  John,  Peter 
and  Jude,  are  once  more  deported  into  ' '  second  century  ex- 
ile;" interpolations  on  a  large  scale  are  assumed  to  save 
fragments  of  Pauline  letters ;  the  unhistorical  character  of 
the  Fourth  Gospel  is  fully  recognized;  and  the  story  of 
Jesus,  from  virgin  birth  to  resurrection  and  ascension,  is 
emptied  of  its  miraculous  content.  Harnack  is  quite  as  far 
removed  from  the  theology  of  the  ecumenic  creeds  as  was 
Baur.  The  differences  between  the  two  critics  concern 
matters  of  wholly  subordinate  interest.  The  "reaction" 
could  not  effect  the  rehabilitation  of  dogma. 

In  the  meantime,  the  evolutionary  hypothesis  had  won  its 
way  into  every  branch  of  science.  If  the  successive  strata 
of  the  earth's  crust  furnished  external  testimony  to  the  rel- 
ative age  of  their  fossil  inclusions,  the  discovered  genetic 
relations  of  palaeontological  forms  supplied  internal  evi- 
dence as  to  their  place  in  the  chain  of  development.  If,  in 
the  vastly  increasing  archaeological  and  documentary  ma- 
terial, landmarks  of  priceless  value  were  here  and  there  set 
up  by  actual  dates,  the  historian  learned  for  the  most  part 
to  determine  chronological  position  by  relying  on  the  ob- 
served tendencies  of  life  and  thought.  In  the  light  of  palae- 
ontological research,  it  became  impossible  for  liberally  edu- 
cated men  to  believe  in  the  Biblical  account  of  man 's  origin 
and  nature.  When  the  principles  of  criticism  that  had 
gained  ascendency  in  other  realms  of  historic  investigation 
were  applied  to  the  Old  Testament,  the  traditional  author- 
ship of  its  books,  the  accepted  course  of  Israelitish  history, 
Messianic  prophecy,  in  any  strict  sense,  and  typology  dis- 
appeared. Many  of  the  conclusions  reached  on  the  basis  of 
Hegelian  philosophy  found  their  triumphant  vindication. 
This  was  not  merely  due  to  the  genius  and  learning  of  such 
men  as  Kuenen  and  Wellhausen,  Stade  and  Duhm,  Robert- 


THE  DECLINE  OF  DOGMA 


son  Smith  and  Cheyne.  Their  results  were  gained  and  won 
general  acceptance,  because  the  spirit  of  the  new  time  de- 
manded a  rational  explanation  of  Israel 's  life  on  the  theory 
of  evolution  that  had  opened  so  many  other  doors.  It  was 
found  that  the  philosophy  of  evolution  did  not  ignore  the 
element  of  personality.  In  fact,  the  prophets,  legislators, 
chroniclers,  sages  and  apocalyptic  seers  of  Israel  had  never 
before  been  such  living  and  essential  factors  of  history.  The 
superstition  was  dispelled  that,  in  order  to  appreciate  an 
author's  worth,  it  is  necessary  to  know  his  name.  The 
merging  of  the  personality  of  Hebrew  patriarchs  in  Hebrew 
tribes  bearing  their  names  was  more  than  compensated  by 
the  light  thrown  on  a  thousand  years  of  growth  in  Palestine. 
The  eclipse  of  the  miracle  rendered  it  possible  to  discover 
the  dominancy  of  ethical  forces.  And  the  new  estimate  was 
introduced  without  serious  injury  to  the  religious  sentiment. 
It  is  a  significant  indication  of  the  religious  vitality  of  the 
Church  that  in  a  measure  she  was  able  to  adjust  herself  to 
a  conception  of  Israel's  life  that  demolished  the  very  foun- 
dations of  Christological  dogma.  The  religious  sense,  as 
well  as  the  scientific  consciousness,  found  a  deeper  satisfac- 
tion in  the  new  view  than  the  old  could  afford. 

But  the  movement  could  not  stop  at  the  Old  Testament. 
Under  its  influence  Ernest  Renan,  the  great  Orientalist, 
wrote  his  Life  of  Jesus.1  This  work  suffers  from  an  in- 
discriminate use  and  an  insufficient  critique  of  the  sources, 
and  it  draws  too  freely  upon  a  rich  and  artistic  imagina- 
tion. But  its  fundamental  attitude  is  that  of  Strauss,  and 
it  adds  a  new  emphasis  on  the  physical  environment  and  an 
earnest  attempt  to  trace  the  complication  and  denouement 
of  the  tragedy  of  Jesus'  life.  The  tragic  element  was  nat- 
urally discovered  in  his  Messianic  consciousness.  How, 
without  infringement  upon  his  humanity,  this  conscious- 
ness could  originate  and  grow  within  him,  was  persuasively 
described  by  Baldensperger.2  Fed  by  apocalyptic  litera- 
ture a  Messianic  hope  of  a  highly  spiritual  type  had  devel- 

1  Vie  tie  Jesus,  1863. 

*Das  Selbsibewusstsein  Jesu,z  1892. 


30  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZAEETH 

oped  in  the  circles  whence  Jesus  came  forth.  This  position 
is  still  maintained  in  the  most  modern  treatment  of  the  life 
of  Jesus.  The  admirable  work  of  Albert  Reville,1  coming 
from  a  milieu  than  which  none  can  be  more  conducive  to 
truly  scientific  study  of  religious  phenomena,  is  sympathetic 
in  spirit,  accurate  in  method,  and  adequate  in  critical  appa- 
ratus. But  unverifiable  and  improbable  assumptions  re- 
main. In  spite  of  the  abundant  labors  of  Hilgenfeld,  Volk- 
mar,  Dillmann  and  Charles,  the  most  vital  questions  in  apoc- 
alyptic literature  are  still  sub  judice;  and  there  is  not  a 
tittle  of  evidence  that  such  a  conception  of  the  Messiah  as 
the  composite  Parables  of  Enoch  present  was  known  to 
Jesus.  That ' l  son  of  man ' '  was  a  Messianic  title,  and  that 
Jesus  used  it  as  such  a  designation  of  himself,  can  no  longer 
be  maintained.  When  the  recorded  sayings  of  Jesus  are 
translated  back  into  his  own  Galilean  dialect  of  the  Ara- 
maic, as  they  must  be,  the  impossibility  of  both  of  these  as- 
sumptions becomes  evident.  But  with  them  goes  the  only 
ground  on  which  it  can  be  supposed  that  Jesus  regarded 
himself  as  the  Messiah.  An  earlier  strand  of  apostolic 
tradition,  as  Lagarde  discerned,  still  preserves  the  memory 
of  a  prophetic  career  averse  to  Messianic  pretensions.  The 
investigations  of  the  phrase  "son  of  man"  by  Eerdmans, 
Schmidt,  Meyer,  Lietzmann  and  Wellhausen,  the  searching 
examination  of  the  passion  week  by  Brandt,2  and  the  inci- 
sive study  of  the  secret  of  the  Messiahship  by  Wrede3  have 
tended  to  remove  the  last  remnant  of  the  traditional  con- 
ception. 

But  the  scientific  instrument  itself  by  which  this  change 
has  been  effected  prevents  the  dissolution  of  the  personality 
of  Jesus  into  a  symbol  and  a  name,  and  points  the  creed- 
making  tendency  into  new  paths.  Nothing  can  more  con- 
vincingly prove  that  Christianity  ultimately  owes  its  origin 
to  a  living  Galilean  prophet  than  the  preservation  in  the 
written  records  of  a  tradition  radically  at  variance  with  the 

1  Jesus  de  Nazareth,  1897. 

2  Die  Evangelische  Geschichte,  1893. 

8  Das  Messiasgeheimnis  in  den  Evangelien,  1901. 


THE  DECLINE  OF  DOGMA  31 

estimate  held  by  the  authors  of  these  biographies.  This  tra- 
dition cannot  have  been  invented.  Every  motive  for  such 
a  creation  is  wanting.  It  can  only  be  the  reflection  of  his- 
toric fact.  Its  persistence  in  Palestine  explains  the  silence 
of  Philo  and  Josephus.  When  Philo  died,  Hellenistic 
Christianity  had  not  yet  risen  above  the  horizon.  When 
toward  the  end  of  the  first  century  Josephus  wrote  his  An- 
tiquities,  the  distinction  between  those  Aramaic  speaking 
Jews  who  looked  for  the  return  of  Jesus  as  the  Messiah  and 
those  who  expected  the  coming  of  a  Son  of  David,  preserved 
in  heaven  for  the  time  appointed,  was  not  sufficiently 
marked  to  warrant  a  special  mention  of  the  former  as  a 
party  or  a  philosophical  school.  The  precious  seed  lay 
buried  in  the  ground  longer  than  has  been  supposed,  imper- 
ceptible to  eyes  surveying  only  the  salient  features  of  Jew- 
ish life.  Ritschl  rightly  felt  that  between  the  death  of 
Jesus  and  the  Pauline  literature  there  was  a  period  in  which 
a  less  advanced  type  of  doctrine,  a  somewhat  modified  Juda- 
ism, was  proclaimed  by  the  immediate  disciples.1  He  erred, 
however,  when  he  looked  for  this  teaching  to  the  epistles 
ascribed  by  tradition  to  the  apostles,  just  as  the  Tubingen 
school  was  mistaken  in  making  the  Apocalypse  a  representa- 
tive of  this  primitive  Christianity.  As  yet  we  possess  no 
literary  document  from  the  immediate  disciples  of  Jesus 
bearing  testimony  to  their  faith.  Whether  any  of  them 
ever  wrote  a  line,  or  the  earth  still  holds  any  fragment  of 
the  first  written  Aramaic  record,  the  future  may  reveal. 
Meanwhile  we  cannot  be  sufficiently  grateful  for  the  possi- 
bility of  disentangling  an  early  and  reliable  tradition  by 
means  of  literary  and  historical  criticism  of  the  Greek  gos- 
pels and  a  translation  of  the  sayings  ascribed  to  Jesus  into 
the  language  which  he  spoke. 

The  very  facts  that  most  unmistakably  show  the  historical 
character  of  Jesus,  are  at  the  same  time  precious  indications 
of  his  distinctive  spirit  and  peculiar  genius.  They  furnish 
the  basis  for  constructive  work.  By  a  judicious  sifting  of 

1  Die  CTiristliche  Lehre  von  der  Rechtfertigung  und  Versohnung,  II, 
1882,  p.  320, 


32  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZAEETH 

the  material  on  the  vantage-ground  thus  gained,  and  a  care- 
ful testing  of  each  logion  in  the  closest  possible  restoration 
of  its  original  Aramaic  form,  the  general  trend  at  least  of 
the  teaching  of  Jesus  may  be  ascertained.  In  separating 
later  accretions,  not  only  the  influence  of  the  intellectual 
environment  but  also  the  reaction  against  it  of  a  mighty  per- 
sonality, not  only  the  organizing  principles  on  which  the 
emphasis  falls  but  also  the  unassimilated  survivals  of  older 
conceptions,  must  be  considered.  Otto  Schmoller,  Johannes 
Weiss  and  Wilhelm  Bousset  have  well  maintained  that  the 
kingdom  of  heaven  must  have  been  even  to  Jesus  an  eschato- 
logical  idea:  the  prophet's  eyes  are  always  turned  toward 
the  future.  But  if  the  coming  kingdom  was  conceived  by 
him  as  a  social  order  whose  laws  were  of  permanent  validity, 
he  may  have  regarded  it  as  present  wherever  those  laws 
were  observed,  and  his  ethics  cannot  be  interpreted  as  merely 
provisional  in  view  of  an  impending  catastrophe.  It  is  a 
most  delicate  task  to  determine  Jesus'  attitude  on  social 
questions.  The  temptation  is  very  strong  to  cover  with  his 
authority  one  or  another  view  in  economic  science.  But  it 
is  more  honest  to  differ  than  to  force  the  interpretation. 
If  a  man  believes  that  retaliation,  warfare,  usury,  inordi- 
nate wealth,  oath-taking  and  divorce  are  essential  to  the 
maintenance  of  civil  society,  he  may  see  in  some  real  or  im- 
aginary inconsistencies  a  support  for  his  own  philosophy, 
but  he  must  not  on  this  ground  obscure  or  obliterate  the 
fundamental  opposition  of  Jesus  to  these  things.  Let  him 
express  his  dissent,  as  Renan  and  Reville  have  done  in  re- 
gard to  wealth.  If,  from  a  democratic  standpoint,  such  and 
similar  positions  may  appear  of  necessity  to  imply  a  social- 
istic programme,  it  is  not  justifiable  to  assume  that  the  far- 
reaching  principle  of  service  taking  the  place  of  authority 
must  have  been  thought  out  in  all  its  political  and  economic 
bearings,  and  to  throw  doubt  upon  the  famous  "Render 
unto  Caesar  that  which  is  Caesar 's."  In  view  of  the  pre- 
suppositions of  the  time,  the  rugged  honesty  of  Albert 
Dulk  's1  criticism  of  Jesus  for  his  ambition  to  become  a  king 
1  Der  Irrgang  des  Lebens  Jesu,  1884. 


THE  DECLINE  OF  DOGMA  33 

makes  a  more  favorable  impression  than  the  defense  by  A. 
Matthes,1  from  substantially  the  same  point  of  view,  of  his 
shrewdness  in  taking  advantage  of  a  position  ' '  in  the  centre 
of  the  world 's  history. ' '  It  should  be  recognized  that  Jesus 
was  not  cognizant  of  the  conditions  of  modern  life,  with  its 
peculiar  problems,  its  larger  experience  and  observation, 
its  social  theories,  and  its  methods  of  testing  them.  Yet 
there  can  be  no  question  that  the  toiling  masses  of  mankind, 
seeking  a  more  equitable  distribution  of  the  wealth  drawn 
from  nature 's  bounties  and  produced  by  common  labor,  and 
a  mode  of  existence  more  in  harmony  with  the  dignity  of 
manhood,  are  quite  right  in  feeling  that  by  the  substitution 
of  the  Jesus  of  history  for  the  celestial  King  of  dogma,  they 
have  won  a  friend  whose  teaching,  life,  and  death  will  ever 
be  an  inspiration  in  the  struggle  for  justice  and  for  mercy. 
Jesus  looked  forward  to  the  kingdom  of  heaven.  He  also 
looked  upward  to  the  Father  in  heaven.  This  conception 
was  not  new.  But  he  gave  it  a  majesty  and  a  tenderness 
never  approached  before.  His  thought  of  God  manifestly 
came  from  a  rich  inner  experience,  a  deep  and  holy  mysti- 
cism. Not  from  books  or  teachers,  but  from  immediate  con- 
templation of  reality,  did  he  gain  his  marvelous  assurance. 
As  he  reflected  on  the  infinite  goodness  of  the  divine  Being, 
he  realized  that  neither  he,  nor  any  other  man,  could  be 
called  good.  But  he  seems  to  have  had  no  morbid  sense  of 
sin.  His  consciousness  of  imperfection  was  swallowed  up 
in  the  sense  of  divine  love.  He  looked  into  the  Father's 
face,  and  they  were  one  forever.  "With  a  conscience  void  of 
offense,  he  whispered  Abba!  and  leaned  with  childlike  con- 
fidence, obedience  and  joy  upon  the  Unseen  Arm.  This  at- 
titude toward  the  infinite  mystery  in  which  our  human  life 
is  imbedded  is  religion  pure  and  undefiled.  This  is  eternal 
life.  Tb  whom  should  we  go  to  hear  words  instinct  with  this 
life  butNto  the  Prophet  of  Nazareth  ?  The  Christ  of  dogma 

1  Das  UrUld  Christi,  1897,  p.  260  f .     This  is  a  thoughtful  and  sug- 
gestive work,  written  from  an  independent  standpoint  in  a  reverent 
spirit,  and  should  not  be  passed  by  because  of  its  somewhat  artificial 
arrangement 
3 


34  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZAEETH 

had  much  to  give.  "Of  his  fulness  we  all  received,  and 
grace  for  grace."  But  this  he  could  not  give.  For  he  was 
not  true  man.  Therefore  dogma  must  pass  away,  setting 
the  scientific  instinct  free  to  search  for  the  historic  reality, 
and  leaving  the  moral  and  religious  impulses  to  find  a  new 
ideal  in  the  life  of  Jesus.1 

1  This  passing  of  Christological  dogma  is  but  an  incident  in  the 
process  of  evolution  by  which  a  more  adequate  estimate  of  the  uni- 
verse has  been  formed  and  takes  the  place  of  the  corruption  prevalent 
among  the  civilized  nations  of  antiquity.  The  conflict  between  the 
old  view  of  the  world  and  the  new  has  been  described,  with  amplest 
knowledge,  by  Andrew  D.  White,  A  History  of  the  Warfare  of  Science 
with  Theology  in  Christendom,  1896, 


CHAPTEE  III 
THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  BASIS 

The  chief  contributions  of  the  Old  Testament  to  the  de- 
veloping Christology  of  the  Church  were  the  Messianic 
prophecies  and  types  discovered  in  its  various  books  by  late 
Jewish  and  Christian  exegesis.  This  exegesis  was  inti- 
mately connected  with,  and  largely  rested  upon,  a  peculiar 
conception  of  the  world,  of  man's  origin,  nature  and  des- 
tiny, and  of  his  fall  and  redemption.  The  universe  was  re- 
garded as  having  been  brought  into  existence  through  the 
fiat  of  a  supra-mundane  divinity.  The  first  man  was  sup- 
posed to  have  been  fashioned  from  clay  by  the  hands  of  the 
deity,  and  the  first  woman  to  have  been  made  of  a  rib  taken 
from  man.  By  their  disobedience  this  couple  was  thought 
to  have  made  the  whole  race  subject  to  death,  brought  all 
their  descendants  into  the  power  of  the  devil,  and  plunged 
them  into  the  everlasting  torments  of  hell.  Such  a  com- 
plete ruin  of  a  being  made  in  the  image  of  God  was  consid- 
ered as  having  occasioned  a  divine  scheme  of  salvation.  As 
the  utter  helplessness  of  man's  condition  and  the  need  of  re- 
demption could  only  become  apparent  in  the  course  of  his 
history,  his  depravity  was  allowed  to  increase  until  "the 
fulness  of  time, ' '  when  the  Saviour  should  appear.  Mean- 
while, however,  the  divine  plan— so  it  was  thought— had 
been  gradually  revealed  to  men,  partly  through  the  sure 
prophetic  word,  shining  as  a  lamp  in  a  dark  place,  partly 
through  a  series  of  divinely  ordained  types  pointing  to  the 
coming  Redeemer  and  his  reign  on  earth. 

According  to  this  interpretation  of  the  Hebrew  Scrip- 
tures, Messianic  prophecy  furnished  also  a  present  means 
of  salvation  to  those  who  did  not  live  to  experience  its  fulfil- 
ment, but,  seeing  it  from  afar,  believed  and  were  justified 

35 


36  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZARETH 

by  faith.  Since  without  a  knowledge  of  Christ  man  must 
utterly  perish,  this  knowledge  was  thus  mercifully  supplied 
from  the  very  beginning,  and  grew  more  plentiful  from  age 
to  age.  Like  a  golden  thread,  the  story  of  Jesus  Christ  was 
supposed  to  run  through  every  book  of  the  Hebrew  Bible, 
his  life  and  death,  his  teaching  and  miracles,  his  resurrec- 
tion and  return  to  earth  being  indicated  so  plainly  that  only 
an  obdurate  heart,  a  blind  unbelief  and  a  dull  understand- 
ing could  fail  to  recognize  even  the  details  of  the  marvelous 
picture,  while  good  men  in  every  generation  were  brought 
through  it  to  a  living  faith  in  Christ,  and  the  apostles  were 
enabled  to  find  the  Messiah  when  he  finally  appeared. 

In  a  similar  manner,  it  was  supposed  that  a  system  of  re- 
ligious facts,  experiences  and  practices  had  been  gradually 
introduced,  whose  sole  value  lay  in  its  esoteric  meaning,  its 
suggestion  of  things  to  come.  The  law  of  Moses  was  con- 
ceived of  as  a  school-master  leading  men  to  Christ.  Sur- 
rounded on  all  sides  by  adumbrations  of  the  great  reality  to 
come,  a  member  of  the  chosen  people  might,  it  was  thought, 
by  looking  at  the  type,  divine  the  antitype,  and  approaching 
in  the  right  spirit  the  divinely  appointed  sign,  draw  near 
to  the  infinite  grace  itself  and  receive  spiritual  life.  While 
it  was  felt  by  some  Christian  interpreters  that  the  divine 
choice  of  a  certain  object  or  fact  as  a  type  could  not  be  abso- 
lutely manifest  until  an  inspired  writer  in  the  New  Testa- 
ment proclaimed  its  typical  significance,  it  was  generally 
held  that  the  same  spirit  which  revealed  to  the  apostles  what 
were  the  true  types  of  Christ  had  already  opened  the  eyes 
of  many  who  were  looking  for  the  consolation  of  Israel  to 
the  hidden  meaning  of  the  ordinances  of  God. 

The  substance  of  Messianic  prophecy,  as  understood  by 
orthodox  theologians,  may  be  briefly  summed  up  as  follows : 
Ere  yet  man's  disobedience  and  the  fall  had  closed  to  him 
the  gates  of  paradise,  the  protevangel  was  proclaimed  by 
God  himself.  In  the  curse  upon  the  devil,  he  gave  the  bless- 
ed promise  that  woman's  seed,  that  is  the  Christ,  would 
crush  the  serpent's  head,  destroy  the  power  of  Satan.1 

1  Gen.,  iii,  15. 


THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  BASIS  37 

When  Noah,  disgraced  by  his  son  Ham,  pronounced  his 
curse  upon  Canaan,  he  united  with  it  a  promise  that  Japhet 
should  dwell  in  the  tents  of  Shem,  thus  predicting  the  time 
when  the  Gentiles  should  become  fellow-heirs  with  Israel  of 
the  Messianic  blessings.1  Having  left  Ur  of  the  Chaldees 
to  go  he  knew  not  whither  in  obedience  to  God's  command, 
Abraham  received  the  assurance  that  in  his  seed,  that  is,  the 
Christ,  all  nations  should  be  blessed.2  This  pledge  was  re- 
newed to  Isaac  and  to  Jacob.  Before  he  passed  away, 
Jacob,  leaning  on  his  staff,  prophesied  that  the  scepter 
should  not  turn  from  between  the  feet  of  Judah  till  Shiloh, 
that  is  the  Messiah,  should  come.3  Hired  by  Balak,  king  of 
Moab,  to  curse  Israel,  Balaam  was  forced  in  spirit  to  bless, 
and  to  foretell  the  rising  out  of  Jacob  of  the  bright  and 
morning  star,  the  Christ.4  Having  given  his  people  the 
Law  on  Sinai,  and  led  it  to  the  border  of  the  promised  land, 
Moses  predicted  that  the  Lord  should  raise  up  from 
among  his  brethren  a  prophet  like  unto  himself,  thus  indi- 
cating Christ's  prophetic  office.5  Job,  the  patriarch,  fore- 
saw him  as  the  Redeemer  who,  on  the  last  day,  would  raise 
his  suffering  saint  from  the  dead.6  In  Zion,  King  David 
sang  many  a  hymn  concerning  his  greater  Son  and  Lord. 
He  predicted  his  anointment  as  King,  his  divine  generation, 
and  his  universal  reign,7  his  humiliation  as  a  man  inferior 
to  the  angels,8  his  resurrection,9  his  divine  strength,10  his 
cry  of  God-forsakenness  on  the  cross  and  his  many  suffer- 
ings,11 his  triumphant  entrance  into  the  heavenly  sanctu- 
ary,12 his  voluntary  assumption  of  human  nature  to  offer  a 
sacrifice  better  than  that  of  bulls  and  calves,13  his  betrayal 
•by  Judas  Iscariot,14  his  divinity  and  his  eternal  reign,15  his 
ascension,16  his  seating  himself  on  the  right  hand  of  the 
Father,17  his  rejection  by  the  elders  of  his  people.18  Solo- 
mon, in  Ps.,  Ixxii,  spoke  of  his  celestial  reign;  in  Prov., 

*Gen.,  ix,  27.    2  Gen.,  xvii,  3.    *  Gen.,  xlix,  10.  *  Num.,  xxiv,  17. 

*Deut.,  xviii,   15;  8xix,   25.     7  Ps.,  ii.     8  Ps.,  viii.  "  Ps.,  xvi.     10Ps., 

xxi.     "Ps.,  xxii.     "Ps.  xxiv.    1S P s.,  xl.  " Ps.,  xli.  ™ Ps.t  xlv.    " Ps., 
Ixviii.     "  Ps.,  ex.     » Ps.,  cxviii. 


38  THE  PBOPSET  OF  NA2AKETH 

viii,  22  ff.,  of  his  eternal  creation;  in  Canticles  at  great 
length  of  the  intimate  union  of  Christ  and  his  Church. 

These  announcements  of  the  coming  Messiah  were  con- 
tinued by  a  long  line  of  prophets.  Hosea  predicted  the  re- 
turn of  the  Son  of  God  from  Egypt1  and  his  resurrection 
on  the  third  day.2  Joel  foretold  the  pentecostal  outpour- 
ing of  his  Spirit  upon  all  flesh.3  Obadiah  announced  the 
coming  of  a  Saviour  upon  Mount  Zion.4  Jonah,  through 
his  marvelous  deliverance  from  the  belly  of  the  fish,  fore- 
tokened the  resurrection  of  Christ  on  the  third  day.  Micah 
predicted  the  birth  of  the  Messiah  in  Bethlehem  Ephrathah.5 
Isaiah  predicted  the  Christian  dispensation  and  its  exten- 
sion from  Jerusalem,6  the  virgin  birth,7  the  light  that  should 
appear  in  Galilee,8  the  birth  of  the  child  whose  name  would 
be  "  Wonderful  Counsellor,  Mighty  God,  Father  of  Eter- 
nity, Prince  of  Peace, ' '  of  whose  kingdom  there  should  be  no 
end,9  the  coming  of  ' '  the  shoot  of  the  stock  of  Jesse  and  the 
branch  out  of  its  roots,"10  the  forerunner  crying  in  the  wil- 
derness,11 the  suffering  Servant  of  the  Lord,  offering  an 
atoning  sacrifice  for  many  and  rising  from  the  dead  to  see 
of  the  travail  of  his  soul  and  be  satisfied,12  the  deliverer 
that  should  come  to  Zion  and  turn  away  transgression  from 
Jacob,13  and  the  Anointed  One  who,  endowed  with  the 
Spirit,  should  perform  miracles  and  proclaim  good  tidings 
to  the  poor.14  Jeremiah  described  him  as  "the  Branch"15 
and  "the  Lord,  our  righteousness,"16  foretold  the  mourning 
over  the  massacred  infants  at  Bethlehem,17  the  miraculous 
conception18  and  the  new  covenant.19  Ezekiel  prophesied 
the  new  covenant,20  the  coming  of  a  descendant  of  David,21 
the  appearance  of  "one  to  whom  the  right  belongs,"22  the 
reign  of  the  greater  David.23  Daniel  not  only  foretold  the 
death  of  the  Messiah,24  but  also  his  coming  on  the  clouds  of 
heaven.25  Haggai  referred  to  him  as  "the  desire  of  all  na- 

*xi,  1.  2vi,  2.  8iii,  1.  *vs.  18.  °v,  1,  2.  °ii,  Iff.  7vii,  14. 
•viii,  23.  "ix,  5  if .  10xi,  Iff.  uxl,  3.  "lii,  13-liii,  12.  13lix,  20. 
"Ixi,  Iff.  "xxiii,  5;  xxxiii,  15.  lttxxiii,  6.  "xxxi,  15.  uxxxi,  22. 
"xxxi,  31.  ^xi,  19.  ^xvii,  22  ff.  sxxi,  32.  ^xxxiv,  23,  24;  xxxvii, 
24  ff.  »ix,  24-27.  ^vii,  13. 


THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  BASIS  39 

tions."1  Zechariah  spoke  of  him  as  "the  Branch"  that 
should  be  crowned,2  the  king  entering  Zion  on  an  ass  '&  colt,3 
the  good  shepherd  who  should  be  betrayed  for  thirty  shekels 
of  silver,4  and  smitten  of  God.5  Finally,  Malachi  predicted 
the  appearance  of  the  forerunner,  in  the  power  and  spirit 
of  Elijah,  and  the  coming  of  the  Lord  himself  to  his  temple.6 

Such  was  the  structure  of  the  Messianic  hope  found  in 
the  Old  Testament.  Many  other  features  were  naturally 
added  here  and  there  by  an  interpretation  that  regarded 
Christ  and  his  Church  as  the  nucleus  of  the  Hebrew  Scrip- 
tures. The  list  of  supposed  Messianic  passages  is  by  no 
means  exhausted.  But  those  mentioned  are  the  most  impor- 
tant, and  have  been  most  widely  recognized.  Old  Testa- 
ment Christology  stands  or  falls  with  them.  A  recognition 
of  their  true  character  reveals  with  increasing  clearness  the 
absence  of  the  Christ-conception  in  the  Hebrew  canon,  and 
the  late  appearance  of  the  elements  out  of  which  it  grew. 
This  insight  is  the  result  of  a  long  and  painstaking  scien- 
tific labor  that  has  had  no  other  aim  than  to  discover  the 
true  significance  of  the  language  used  in  the  sources,  the 
exact  value  of  these  sources,  and  the  real  facts  of  history. 

The  story  of  the  Yahwe-garden  in  the  land  of  Eden  is  a 
myth.  Adam  is  not  a  historic  personality.  There  is  no 
reference  to  the  Messiah.  The  constant  struggle  between 
man  and  beast,  the  toil  of  man,  the  suffering  of  woman,  the 
sexual  desire,  the  use  of  clothing,  the  godlike  knowledge, 
yet  the  failure  to  attain  perpetual  existence,  are  explained 
by  the  myth  as  due  to  the  action  of  a  wise  serpent  revealing, 
contrary  to  Yahwe  's  intention,  the  magical  virtue  of  a  tree, 
and  to  Yahwe 's  intervention  to  prevent  further  encroach- 
ments on  the  prerogatives  of  gods.  The  curse  upon  the  ser- 
pent does  not  contemplate  any  end  to  the  conflict  between 
men  and  serpents.  Of  the  three  peoples  mentioned  in  the 
old  song  (Gen.,  ix,  25-27),  Canaan  is  best  known.  The  de- 
sire is  there  expressed  that  the  Canaanites  may  become 
slaves  of  the  nations  represented  by  Shem  and  Japhet. 
That  Shem  is  regarded  as  the  people  entitled  to  possess  the 

*Hag.,  ii,  7.     aiii,  8;  vi,  12.     8ix,  9.     4xi,  12.     8xiii,  7.     8iii,  1. 


40  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZAEETH 

territory  and  to  enslave  its  Canaanitish  inhabitants,  is  clear, 
not  only  from  the  prayer,  "Bless,  Yahwe,  the  tents  of 
Shem!"1  but  also  from  the  concession,  "Let  him  (Japhet) 
dwell  in  the  tents  of  Shem!"  Whatever  other  tribes  the 
author  may  have  had  in  mind,  there  can  be  little  doubt  that 
he  thought  in  the  first  place  of  Israel.  His  reason  for  choos- 
ing the  term  ' '  Shem ' '  may  have  been  to  appeal  to  a  larger 
circle  of  kinsmen  for  aid  or  approval  in  the  subjugation  of 
Canaan.  It  is  probable  that  Japhet,  afterwards  used  as  a 
designation  of  various  peoples  in  Asia  Minor,  Greece  and 
the  Mediterranean  lands,  here  denotes  the  Philistines,  whose 
Cretan  origin  becomes  increasingly  certain.  At  a  time 
when  the  subjection  of  the  Canaanites  seemed  of  utmost  im- 
portance, and  the  tribe  to  which  the  author  belonged  was 
still  willing  to  share  the  land  with  other  invaders  on  con- 
dition that  they  took  a  part  in  crushing  the  earlier  inhabit- 
ants, this  song  was  first  heard.  There  is  no  word  in  it  con- 
cerning the  Messiah,  or  the  Christian  dispensation. 

Abraham,  Isaac  and  Jacob  are  probably  the  local  heroes 
of  Hebron,  Beersheba  and  Shechem.  Their  names  seem  to 
indicate  that  as  such  they  received  divine  honors  in  these 
places  at  an  earlier  period.  The  legends  told  of  them  reflect 
the  spirit  and  ideals  of  the  early  royal  period.  When  the 
Canaanites  had  been  actually  subjugated,  the  question  arose 
as  to  the  justice  of  this  deed.  The  right  of  Israel  to  the  soil 
was  then  established  by  the  fiction  of  a  promise  given  to  the 
mythical  ancestor.2  Conscience  being  satisfied,  the  sense  of 
national  greatness  could  voice  itself  by  furnishing  this  an- 
cestor also  with  a  promise  that  his  descendants  would  be- 
come such  "a  great  and  mighty  nation "  that  other  peoples 
seeing  their  glory  might  wish  to  be  as  blessed  as  they.  * '  All 
nations  shall  be  blessed, "  is  a  mistranslation.  The  verb  has 
a  reflexive  force.  It  should  be  rendered :  "  All  nations  shall 
bless  themselves  with  thy  descendants. "  This  means  that 

1  So  the  text  should  probably  be  read.    Cf .  Gunkel,  Genesis,  1901, 
to  this  passage. 
*Cf.  Schmidt,  article  Covenant  in  the  Encyclopaedia  Biblica. 


THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  BASIS  41 

they  shall  invoke  upon  themselves  such  blessings,  such  a 
marvelous  prosperity,  as  they  see  Israel  enjoying. 

Gen.  xlix,  lOb,  is  probably  a  late  gloss.  It  adds  nothing 
to  the  thought  of  the  first  half  of  the  verse  except  emphasis 
upon  Judah 's  rightful  claim  to  authority  over  subject 
peoples.  While  the  original  poet  sang : 

"Not  turns  from  Judah  the  sceptre," 
"Nor  the  staff  from  between  his  feet," 

an  annotator  seems  to  have  added  the  couplet : 

' '  Till  that  which  belongs  to  him  come, 
* '  And  nations  pay  him  homage. ' ' 

There  is  no  suggestion  here  of  a  Messiah  taking  from  the 
tribe  of  Judah  its  kingdom. 

The  "star"  that  Balaam  is  represented  as  seeing  is 
evidently  the  Judaean  kingdom.  The  author  of  these  proph- 
ecies lived,  as  is  clear  from  the  historic  allusions,  in  the 
Assyrian  period.  He  put  his  glorification  of  Judah  in  the 
mouth  of  a  legendary  heathen  seer  whose  home  tradition 
had  not  firmly  fixed,  and  whose  name  was  borrowed  from  an 
Edomitish  king.  There  is  no  reference  in  the  songs  to  the 
Messiah. 

That  Deuteronomy,  though  it  purports  to  be  a  work  of 
Moses,  originated  centuries  after  his  time,  and  was  not 
introduced  in  Israel,  even  in  its  simplest  form,  until  the 
eighteenth  year  of  King  Josiah,  or  620  B.  C.,  is  one  of  the 
most  certain  results  of  Biblical  criticism.  The  author  of 
Deut.  xviii,  15,  looked  back  upon  a  long  line  of  prophets  like 
unto  Moses,  raised  up  by  Yahwe  one  after  another.  He  did 
not  look  forward  to  the  Messiah. 

The  poet  by  the  grace  of  God  to  whom  we  owe  the 
dialogues  in  the  book  of  Job  did  not  put  upon  his  hero's 
lips,  we  may  be  sure,  words  such  as  Jerome,  in  his  transla- 
tion, imputes  to  him  in  xix,  25,  26.  Even  the  Massoretic 
text,  though  unquestionably  corrupt,  lies  no  doubt  nearer 
to  the  original.  Only  by  conjecture,  aided  by  the  ancient 
versions  and  the  metre,  the  text  may  be  approximately  re- 


42  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZAEETH 

stored.  It  seems  probable  that  the  two  tetrastichs  (xix,  23- 
24,  25-26)  originally  read  as  follows: 

"Would  that  my  words  were  written," 

"Were  in  a  book  recorded, 

"With  lead  and  iron  stylus " 

"  Cut  in  the  rock  forever ! '  > 

"I  know  he  lives,  my  goel, 

*  *  Upon  the  dust  he  rises. 

' '  My  witness  will  avenge  me, 

"A  curse  will  reach  my  foemen.771 

God  is  the  blood-avenger  and  the  witness.  There  is  no  out- 
look into  a  future  life.  Here,  as  everywhere  else  in  the 
book,  the  solution  of  the  problem  is  sought  on  the  earth, 
without  the  relief  of  an  adjournment.  There  is  no  thought 
of  a  resurrection,  or  of  a  Messiah  in  the  passage. 

David  was  a  poet.  His  lament  over  Saul  and  Jonathan 
proves  this.  But  he  was  not  a  psalm-singer.  The  Psalter 
is  the  hymn-book  of  the  second  temple.2  Many  of  its  songs 
may  have  been  written  in  the  Persian  and  Greek  periods. 
The  bulk  no  doubt  belongs  to  the  Hasmonaean  age,  as 
Olshausen  perceived  long  ago.3  Some  of  the  psalms  would 
never  have  been  regarded  as  Messianic  had  they  not  been 
treated  as  such  by  New  Testament  writers.  Ps.  viii  speaks 
of  man  in  general,  and  not  of  this  or  that  individual ;  Ps. 
xvi  expresses  the  confidence  of  a  chasid,  or  pietist,  of  the 
Harmonaean  period,  that  God  will  preserve  his  life;  Ps. 
xiii  is  a  prayer  of  one  who  has  suffered  much,  containing 
no  allusion  to  the  Messiah.  In  Ps.  xxiv,  it  is  God  himself 
who  enters  the  temple,  probably  at  its  re-dedication  in  165 
B.  C.,  as  Duhm  has  suggested  ;4  Ps.  xl  is  the  .utterance  of  a 

lfThe  later  accretions  have  been  removed  by  Cheyne,  Jewish  Re- 
ligious Life  after  the  Exile,  1898,  p.  169.  In  his  article  on  Job  in 
the  Encyclopaedia  Biblica,  he  offers  a  different  and  less  satisfactory 
restoration. 

2  This  was  shown  with  a  wealth  of  arguments  by  Cheyne  in  his 
Bampton  Lectures,  1889. 

8  Die  Psalmen,  1853. 

'Die  Psalmen,  1899.  Perhaps  the  most  valuable  feature  of  this 
commentary  is  the  lucid  and  convincing  exposition  of  a  number  of 
Maccabaean  and  Hasmonaean  hymns. 


THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  BASIS  43 

soul  that  has  learned,  through  the  study  of  some  prophetic 
book-roll,  that  Yahwe  wants  obedience,  and  not  sacrifices; 
the  experience  of  the  singer  in  xli,  10,  that  even  a  trusted 
servant  proves  faithless,  is  common  enough  in  every  age  and 
does  not  refer  to  Judas  Iscariot;  in  Ps.  Ixviii,  19,  a  victory 
of  Yahwe  on  Mount  Bashan  is  described,  and  not  the  ascen- 
sion of  Christ;  Ps.  cxviii,  22,  is  a  proverb  applicable  in 
many  historic  circumstances. 

Far  more  natural  was  it  that  such  hymns  as  Pss.  ii,  xxi, 
xlv,  ex,  and  also  xviii,  xx,  Ixi,  Ixiii,  Ixviii,  Ixxxiv,  Ixxxix 
and  cxxxii,  should  be  regarded  as  Messianic.  In  these 
Psalms  a  "king"  is  mentioned,  and  he  is  sometimes  called 
"the  Anointed."  Most  of  these  cases  call  for  nothing  but 
an  ordinary  king.  As  long  as  it  was  thought  possible  that 
some  pre-exilic  songs  might  have  been  preserved  in  the 
Psalter,  it  was  accordingly  supposed  that  kings  of  Judah 
were  meant.  With  the  recognition  of  the  post-exilic  origin 
of  the  Psalter  this  became  impossible.  Since  in  some  in- 
stances the  king,  his  relations  to  Yahwe,  his  victories  and 
his  reign  are  described  in  terms  that  seemed  too  exaggerated 
for  any  earthly  monarch,  the  conclusion  was  drawn  that 
either  the  holy  people  itself,  or  else  its  coming  Messiah,  was 
intended.  Closer  examination,  however,  reveals  the  fact 
that  the  transcendent  conception  of  royalty  is  most  natural 
and  best  authenticated  in  the  Hasmonaean  period.  Follow- 
ing Egyptian  custom,  the  Ptolemies  had  assumed  divine 
titles.  The  king  was  "born  of  gods,"  "son  of  Isis  and 
Osiris,"  "god  of  god  and  goddess."  There  is  no  reason  to 
suppose  that  emancipated  aristocrats  in  Jerusalem  hesitated 
to  accord  such  titles  to  an  Antiochus  III.  Even  in  earlier 
times  the  king  had  been  looked  upon  in  Israel  as  a  god-like 
being;  (cp.  II  Sam.  xiv,  17,  20,  where  "angel"  is  un- 
doubtedly a  later  addition,  and  Isa.  ix,  6.)  In  Pss.  Ivii,  2, 
and  Ixxxii,  6,  Pharisaic  hymn-writers  scornfully  designate 
the  Hasmonaean  rulers  as  "gods."  There  would  be  no 
sting  in  this  sarcasm,  if  they  were  not  actually  designated  as 
such.  That  this  was  the  case,  is  shown  by  Ps.  xlv,  where 
the  poet  laureate  of  one  of  these  princes  on  the  occasion  of  a 


44  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZARETH 

royal  wedding  apostrophizes  the  monarch:  "Thy  throne, 
O  god!  is  forever  and  aye,"  and  "0  god!  thy  God  has 
anointed  thee  with  the  oil  of  gladness  above  thy  broth- 
ers."1 The  king  whose  epithalamium  this  is  does  not  be- 
long to  the  future.  In  Ps.  ii  the  anointed  king  on  Zion  is 
represented  as  proclaiming  to  the  rebellious  nations  a  divine 
decree,  given  on  his  accession  to  the  throne,  by  which  they 
were  delivered  to  him.  By  this  anointment  the  political 
ruler  in  Jerusalem  becomes  the  "son"  of  Yahwe,  his  repre- 
sentative on  earth,  whose  duty  it  is  to  secure  recognition 
among  the  nations  for  the  Lord  of  heaven.  Without  the 
ardent  hope  that  the  kingdom  of  the  world  would  be  given 
to  the  saints  of  the  Most  High,  this  bold  conception  would 
not  have  been  possible.  But  this  king  is  not  an  apocalyptic 
figure.  He  is  on  the  field.  A  part  of  the  world  has  already 
been  conquered.  The  rest  will  inevitably  follow.  Already 
a  generation  earlier  Simon  was  greeted  by  a  court  poet,  in 
Ps.  ex,  as  Yahwe 's  vicegerent,  the  new  Melchizedek,  ruler, 
though  not  of  Davidic  descent,  high  priest,  though  not  of 
the  pontifical  family.  As  in  this  psalm,  so  in  I  Mace,  xiv, 
41,  the  double  dignity  is  conferred  upon  Simon  ' '  for  ever, ' ' 
which  probably  means  that  it  was  to  be  a  hereditary  right. 
That  the  Hasmonaean  kings  applied  to  themselves  the  sup- 
posed promises  to  David  in  II  Sam.  vii,  is  only  natural, 
and  may  be  clearly  seen  in  Ps.  Ixxxix.  The  term  "Mes- 
siah" is  naturally  used  of  the  anointed  priestly  rulers. 
But  although  the  language  is  occasionally  strongly  tinged 
with  apocalyptic  imagery,  there  is  nowhere  a  reference  to  a 
future  deliverer,  a  coming  Messiah. 

Solomon  is  not  the  author  of  any  of  the  works  ascribed 
to  him.  Ps.  Ixxii  is  a  prayer  for  a  living  king.  The  singer 

1  All  ancient  witnesses  to  the  text  agree.  If  there  is  a  corruption, 
it  must  have  taken  place  at  a  very  early  time.  Bruston  has  suggested, 
Du  texte  primitive  des  Psaumes,  1873,  that  an  original  yihyeh— 
" there  shall  be'7  was  mistaken  for  Yahwe  and  this  afterwards 
changed  into  Elohim.  Wellhausen  and  Duhm  have  accepted  this  con- 
jecture. But  that  so  simple  a  reading  should  have  been  lost  every- 
where, and  one  offering  such  difficulties  to  later  thought  adopted,  is 
not  probable. 


THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  BASIS  45 

desires  for  his  sovereign  long  life,  prosperity,  wide  con- 
quests, and  an  enduring  name.  There  is  no  necessity  for 
regarding  this  king  as  a  Ptolemy.  Why  should  not  a 
Jewish  poet  have  found  it  in  his  heart  to  wish  as  good 
things  for  a  native  ruler  as  for  a  foreign  potentate  ?  Nor  is 
there  any  need  of  supposing  verses  5-11  to  be  an  interpola- 
tion. The  description  of  wisdom  in  Prov.  viii,  22-31,  is 
generally  regarded  as  a  poetic  expression  of  the  fact  that 
wisdom  is  manifest  in  the  creation  of  the  world.  But  it 
may  be  doubted  whether  the  conception  of  wisdom  as  a 
divine  child,  conceived  and  born  in  heaven  before  the 
creation,  and  playing  as  Yahwe  's  nursling  in  the  new-made 
world,  can  have  sprung  full-fledged  from  the  author's 
fancy.  It  is  more  likely  to  have  a  mythical  origin.  Ara- 
mati  is  Ahura  Mazda 's  child.1  The  role  that  Wisdom  plays 
in  this  passage  is  most  extraordinary.  There  is  no  sugges- 
tion of  an  ' t  eternal  generation, ' '  and  no  connection  with  the 
Messianic  idea.  Canticles  is  neither  an  allegory  of  Christ's 
love  for  his  church,  nor  a  drama  exhibiting  the  steadfast 
affection  of  a  country  maiden  for  her  shepherd  lover  amid 
the  fascinations  of  King  Solomon 's  harem,  nor  yet  a  descrip- 
tion of  wedded  love  for  a  didactic  purpose,  but  simply  a 
string  of  love  lyrics  portraying  the  strongest  of  human 
passions.2 

Hosea  spoke  of  Israel  as  returning  from  Egypt,3  and 
rebuked  the  foolish  confidence  that  looked  for  a  recovery 
"in  two  or  three  days"  from  the  serious  ills  of  the  nation.* 
The  book  of  Joel  probably  was  written  in  the  third  century. 

1  Cf .  C.  P.  Tiele,  Geschiedenis  van  den  godsdienst  in  de  oudheid, 
II,  1,  1895,  p.  138,  and  E.  Stave,  Ueber  den  Einfluss  des  Parsismus 
auf  das  Judentum,  1898,  p.  206;  Cheyne,  Semitic  Studies,  1897,  p. 
112,  thought  of  Persian  influence;  Beer,  in  Theologische  Literatur- 
zeitung,  1899,  p.  330,  particularly  of  Vahu  Mano.     Aramati  seems  to 
the  present  writer  more  likely  to  be  the  original. 

2  Cf .  Schmidt,  The  Messages  of  the  Poets  in  the  series  on  The  Mes- 
sages of  the  Bible,  edited  by  Sanders  and  Kent,  and  his  article  'Cant- 
icles' in  the  New  International  Encyclopaedia,  1902-1904. 

8  XI,  1. 
4  VI,  2. 


46  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZAEETH 

The  author  expected  that  the  signs  of  the  coming  catastro- 
phe would  be  so  numerous  as  to  fill  the  minds  of  young  and 
old  in  Israel  with  prophetic  premonitions.  In  a  post- 
exilic  appendix  to  Amos  a  copyist  or  annotator  has  ex- 
pressed the  hope  that  the  Davidic  dynasty,  fallen  to  the 
ground  as  a  tent,  may  be  established  again.  He  no  doubt 
thought  of  some  surviving  member  of  the  royal  family  as 
the  means  of  raising  the  prostrate  tent.  Obadiah  declares 
that  "conquerors  shall  go  up  from  Mount  Zion  to  judge 
Mount  Esau."  The  words  occur  in  what  is  probably  an 
addition  in  the  Hasmonaean  age  to  a  prophecy  dating  itself 
from  the  Persian  period.  The  marvel  of  the  book  of  Jonah 
is  not  the  story  of  the  fish,  which  is  neither  possible  in  itself 
nor  in  any  way  suggestive  of  the  resurrection,  but  its  quaint 
humor  and  its  warm  human  sympathy.  Micah  iv-vii  forms 
an  appendix  presenting  a  marked  similarity  to  Zech.  ix-xiv, 
and  possibly  is  a  product  of  the  second  century.  The 
author  looks  for  vengeance  upon  the  heathen  oppressors 
and  restoration  of  the  kingdom,  not  to  nobles  and  men  of 
royal  blood  in  the  capital,  but  to  the  country.  From  little 
Beth  Ephrathah  the  great  ruler  of  Israel  will  come  forth  as 
of  yore.  Is  it  David  himself  who  will  return  to  earth,  or 
some  descendant  of  his  living  at  what  was  supposed  to  be 
the  old  family  residence  who  will  come  forth  to  meet  the 
present  emergency,  or  a  man  like  David  who  will  step  to 
the  front  from  some  obscure  corner  of  Judaea  ?  The  literal 
interpretation  is  not  impossible.  If  Elijah,  Jeremiah,  or 
any  one  of  the  prophets,  as  it  would  seem  from  Matth.  xvi, 
14,  might  be  expected  to  return  to  earth,  why  not  David? 
Yet  it  is  perhaps  more  probable  that  the  writer  looked  for  a 
new  David,  and  his  eyes  may  already  have  descried  a  new 
Beth  Ephrathah  in  little  Modein,  the  cradle  of  the  Hasmo- 
naean princes.  Micah  v,  2,  is  an  interpolation,  not  neces- 
sarily dependent  on  Isa.  vii,  14. 

There  is  no  reference  to  the  Messiah  in  Isaiah  ii,  1  ff.  This 
prophet  did  not  predict  in  vii,  14  if.  that  a  virgin  would 
bear  a  child,  and  that  the  child  would  be  the  Messiah.  The 
word  translated  "virgin"  really  means  "young  woman," 


THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  BASIS  47 

married  or  unmarried.  The  sign  consists  in  this,  that  a 
woman  pregnant  at  the  time  the  prophet  spoke  would,  when 
she  had  borne  her  son,  call  him  Immanuel.  So  quickly  would 
the  much  feared  Syro-Ephraimitic  coalition  collapse,  that 
in  less  than  a  year  a  mother  would  call  her  new  born  child 
"With-us-is-God,"  in  characteristic  forgetfulness  of  the 
fatal  weakness  within,  and  the  more  formidable  foe  looming 
up  in  the  background.  This  enemy  would  soon  cover 
Judah,  as  well  as  Damascus  and  Israel,  and  make  it  a 
wilderness  where  a  surviving  remnant  might  learn  to 
choose  the  good  and  reject  the  evil.  And  this  should  be  a 
warning  sign  to  dynasty  and  people.  There  is  not  a  word  in 
the  text  about  a  virgin  or  a  Messiah.1  That  Isa.  ix,  1  ff.  and 
xi,  1  ff.  are  not  the  work  of  the  great  pre-exilic  prophet  has 
been  recognized  by  Stade,2  Hackmann,3  Cheyne,4  Volz5  and 
Marti.6  These  passages  presuppose  the  fall  of  the  dynasty, 
the  exile,  and  the  changed  attitude  of  Yahwe  to  his  people. 
It  is  evident  that  the  joyous  confidence  these  poems  breathe 
is  occasioned  by  the  birth  of  a  son  in  the  Davidic  family 
under  especially  favorable  political  circumstances.  As  the 
background  is  clearly  the  exile,  Sellin7  has  thought  of  the 
birth  of  Zerubbabel,  which  presumably  took  place  at  the 
time  when  the  destruction  of  the  Babylonian  empire  was 
threatened  by  the  advancing  Persians.  But  in  Isa.  xl- 
xlviii,  written  at  that  period,  Yahwe  has  no  king  but  Cyrus. 
It,  therefore,  seems  more  probable  that  it  was  the  elevation 
of  Jehoiachin  from  his  dungeon,  his  reinstatement  in  the 
honors  at  court  belonging  to  his  rank,  and  the  birth  of  his 
son,  Sin-apal-uzur  (or  Sheshbazzar),  the  later  governor  of 
Judaea  (ca.  561  B.  C.),  that  inspired  these  hopes.  The 

*Cf.  especially  F.  C.  Porter,  A  Suggestion  regarding  Isaiah's  Im- 
manuel  in  the  Journal  of  Biblical  Literature,  1895,  p.  19  ff .,  and  ar- 
ticles Immanuel  and  Isaiah  by  Cheyne  in  the  Encyclopaedia  Biblica. 

3  Geschichte  Israels,  I,  1885,  p.  596. 

*  Die  ZuJcunftserwartung  des  Jesaia,  Gottingen,  1893,  p.  130  ff. 

*  Introduction  to  the  Book  of  Isaiah,  1895,  p.  44  if. 

'Die  Vorexilische  Tahweprophetie  und  der  Messias,  1897,  p.  57  ff. 
•Das  Buch  Isaia,  1900,  p.  95. 
T  8erubl>dbel,  1898,  p.  37. 


48  THE  PKOPHET  OF  NAZAEETH 

voices  that  the  great  prophet  of  the  exile  hears  ordering  the 
way  to  be  prepared  for  Yahwe 's  return  to  Jerusalem  are 
evidently  those  of  celestial  agents  entrusted  with  the  trans- 
formation of  historic  conditions  to  this  end.  Although 
many  an  individual  sufferer  must  have  furnished  the  char- 
acteristic features  of  the  Servant  of  Yahwe  in  Isa.  xl-lv,  it 
can  scarcely  be  subject  to  serious  doubt  that  this  figure  rep- 
resents the  people  of  Israel,  whose  patient  endurance  of  evil 
in  the  exile  is  felt  to  have  a  redemptive  value,  and  whose 
reorganized  national  life,  it  is  hoped,  will  bring  the  knowl- 
edge of  the  only  living  God  to  the  other  nations  of  the 
earth.1  The  famous  section,  lii,  13-liii,  12,  is  retrospective 
and  philosophical.  It  does  not  predict  a  coming  redeemer. 
It  is  Yahwe  himself  who  comes  to  Zion  in  Isa.  lix,  20,  and 
in  Ixi,  1  ff.  the  prophet  introduces  himself  as  clothed  with 
the  spirit  of  Yahwe  to  bring  the  glad  tidings  of  liberty  to 
his  poor  compatriots.  Nowhere  in  the  book  of  Isaiah  is 
there  a  prediction  of  the  coming  in  the  future  of  a  person 
designated  as  the  Messiah. 

The  author  of  Jer.  xxiii,  5  ff.,  emphasizes  the  righteous 
character  and  royal  dignity  of  the  " Shoot"  to  be  raised  to 
David,  whose  name  will  be  Jozedek.2  As  Geiger  recognized 
long  ago,  the  writer  lived  in  the  Hasmonaean  period.  The 
name  possibly  contains  a  hint  of  the  pontifical  succession; 
the  Hasmonaeans  were  naturally  regarded  as  the  successors 
of  David ;  the  royal  title  apparently  is  still  a  hope.  In  Jer. 
xxxiii,  14-26,  a  late  fragment  not  yet  found  in  the  copy 
used  by  the  earliest  Greek  version,  the  writer  evidently 
looks  upon  the  Hasmonaean  princes  and  high-priests  as  the 
legitimate  successors  of  the  Davidic  dynasty  and  the 
Aaronid  family.  He  rebukes  the  people  that  look  upon 
these  families  as  having  been  "rejected,"  coming  to  their 
end  with  Zedekiah  and  Onias.  To  his  way  of  thinking,  the 
promise  to  David  is  manifestly  being  fulfilled  in  the  pres- 
ent dynasty,  and  there  will  always  be  a  king  sitting  on  the 

'Cf.  especially  Budde,  Die  sogenannten  Ebed-Yahwe-Lieder,  1900. 
aE.  V.  "The  Lord  is  our  righteousness j"  the  Greek  version  has 
Jozedek. 


THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  BASIS  49 

throne  of  David,  and  guaranteeing  the  continuance  of  the 
priesthood.     The  little  book,  Jer.  xxx,  xxxi,  is  probably  a 
product  of  the  first  decades  of  the  fifth  century,  when  the 
Graeco-Persian  conflict  stirred  new  hopes  of  independence 
in  Judaea.1    Rachel's  lament  over  her  children  as  dead, 
and  the  reward  for  her  tender  care  in  their  return  from 
captivity,  have  nothing  to  do  with  the  story  of  the  massacre 
of  infants  in  Bethlehem.     Her  tomb  was  at  Ramah    (1 
Sam.  x,  2),  and  her  children  were  Joseph  and  Benjamin 
and   their    descendants.     "Foemina   circumdabit   virum," 
Jer.  xxxi,  22,  continues  to  be  to  Roman  Catholic  theology 
as  important,  as  a  Messianic  prophecy,  as  "Ecce  virgo  con- 
cipiet, ' '  Isa.  vii,  14,  has  until  recent  times  been  to  Protestant 
theology.     That ' '  a  woman  surrounds  a  man ' '  is  understood 
to  mean  that  she  carries  within  her  a  male  child.     But  since 
this  would  be  a  common  occurrence,  and  not  a  miracle,  the 
" woman"  must  be  the  Virgin  Mary,  the  "man"  Jesus,  and 
the  "new  thing"  her  pregnant  condition  without  the  aid  of 
a  man.     The  passage  should  probably  be  read  and  ren- 
dered, ' '  I  will  create  a  new  thing— men  will  walk  about  in  a 
redeemed  land. '  '2     The  establishment  of  national  independ- 
ence and  prosperity,  revealing  Yahwe's  pardoning  grace 
and  awakening  a  willingness  to  obey  his  law,  is  the  new  ar- 
rangement that  the  prophet  yearns  for  (xxxi,  31).     Ez.  xi, 
19,  speaks  of  willingness  to  obey  Yahwe's  commandments, 
and  not  of  the  Christian  dispensation.     The  "lofty  top  of 
the  cedar"  (Ez.  xvii,  22),  like  the  "one  who  has  the  right" 
to  the  ruined  city  of  Jerusalem   (xxi,  32),  is  evidently 
Jehoiachin.     Ez.  xxxiv,  23,  24,  seems  to  be  an  interpolation 
breaking  the  context  and  at  variance  with  its  thought.     The 
same  hand  has  probably  introduced  "my  servant  David" 
in  Ez.  xxxvii,  24,  25.     Whether  the  annotator  used  this 
name  simply  as  an  appellative,  or  actually  had  in  mind  the 
historical  David,  he  appears  to  have  wished  that  his  people 
might  have  a  king  like  David.     His  ideal  was  in  the  past. 

1  Cf .   Schmidt,  article  Jeremiah   (the  Boole)    in  the  Encyclopaedia 
Biblica,  and  The  Book  of  Jeremiah  in  the  New  World,  December,  1900. 
a  Schmidt,  I.  c. 


50  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZAEETH 

The  book  of  Daniel  was  written  at  the  time  of  the  Macca- 
baean  uprising  (ca.  165  B.  C.),  as  is  now  universally  ad- 
mitted. It  never  speaks  of  the  Messiah.  The  being  "like 
a  man ' '  that  appears  on  the  clouds  of  heaven  is  the  celestial 
representative  of  Israel.  By  many  interpreters  it  is  held 
to  be  a  symbol  of  the  humane  regime  characteristic  of  the 
new  world  power.  More  probably  it  is  here,  as  elsewhere,  an 
angel,  and  in  that  case  undoubtedly  the  angel  Michael, 
Israel's  celestial  patron.1  The  "anointed  prince,"  Dan. 
ix,  25,  is  probably  Joshua  ben  Jozadak,  with  whom  the  high- 
priestly  office  begins,  and  the  ' '  anointed, ' '  who  is  ' '  cut  off, '  * 
i.  e.,  removed  from  his  place,  is  either  Jochanan-Onias  III, 
possibly  the  founder  of  the  temple  at  Leontopolis,2  or 
Joshua-Jason,  with  whom  the  legitimate  line  comes  to  its 
end.  Haggai  does  not  speak  of  a  person  at  all  in  ii,  7,  but 
of  precious  gems  as  being  brought  into  the  temple.  If  the 
references  to  the  "branch"  in  Zech.  iii,  8,  vi,  12,  are  orig- 
inal,3 the  Davidic  descendant  Zerubbabel  is  meant,  whose 
coronation  as  king  Zechariah  expected.  The  additions  to 
the  book  (chs.  ix-xiv),  made  in  the  second  century,  allude 
to  some  of  the  rulers  of  the  people  immediately  before  the 
Maccabaean  revolt.  The  shepherd  who  is  no  longer  willing 
to  feed  the  flock,  lays  down  his  office,  demands  payment,  re- 
ceives the  inadequate  sum  of  thirty  shekels,  and  deposits 
these  in  the  temple  treasury,  may  well  be  Hyrcanus,  the  son 
of  Tobias,  as  Wellhausen*  has  suggested;  and  the  wicked 
shepherd  who  stands  so  near  to  Yahwe,  yet  is  slain  by  him, 
may  be  Menelaus.  The  pious  and  victorious  ruler  who  en- 
ters Zion  in  triumph,  and  leads  the  sons  of  Judah  against 

1Cf.  Schmidt,  The  "Son  of  Man"  in  the  Boole  of  Daniel  in  Journal 
of  Biblical  Literature,  1900,  II,  p.  22  ff,  and  Julius  Grill,  Untersuch- 
ungen  'uber  die  Entstehung  des  vierten  Evangeliums,  1902,  p.  55  ff. 

2Cf.  Hugo  Willrich,  Juden  und  Griechen  vor  der  Malckdbdischen 
Erhebung,  1895;  Wellhausen,  Gott  gel.  Anzeigen,  1895,  p.  951  ff; 
Israelitische  und  judische  Geschichte,3  1897,  p.  244  f. 

•Jb\  E.  Peiser,  Zu  Zalcharia  in  Orientalistische  Litteratur-Zei- 
tung,  15  Aug.,  1901,  col.  313,  and  Duhm,  Das  Buch  Jeremia,  1901, 
p.  181  f,  express  grave  doubts. 

*  Die  Tcleinen  Prophetenf  1898,  p.  196, 


THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  BASIS  51 

the  sons  of  Greece,  is  probably  one  of  the  Hasmonaeans.  It 
is  Yahwe  himself,  and  not  the  Messiah,  whom  Malachi  de- 
scribes as  entering  his  temple  to  purge  the  sons  of  Levi, 
that  they  may  offer  proper  sacrifices ;  and  it  is  the  real  Eli- 
jah, who  was  carried  away  alive  from  the  earth,  that  he  looks 
for  to  heal  the  internal  dissensions  and  to  render  it  possible 
for  Yahwe  to  dwell  in  the  temple. 

The  Hebrew  Bible  contains  no  prophecy  of  the  appear- 
ance upon  earth  of  such  a  personality  as  Jesus  of  Nazareth 
seems  to  have  been.     Nor  does  it  anywhere  predict  the  com- 
ing of  such  a  being  as  the  Messiah  of  Jewish  thought  was 
in  the  Roman  period.     The  term  "Messiah,"  or  " Yahwe 's 
Messiah,"  is  used  as  a  designation  of  kings,  high-priests, 
and  priestly  rulers,  who  have  actually  been  invested  with 
their  office  by  anointment.     No  member  of  the  old  royal 
family,  around  whom  political  hopes  clustered  in  the  Chal- 
daean  and  Persian  periods,  was  called  "the  Messiah."    As 
a  designation  of  a  coming  deliverer,  this  term  is  not  found 
in  the  Hebrew  canon.     No  passage  written  while  kings 
ruled  in  Jerusalem  and  Samaria  even  alludes  to  any  future 
monarch.     When  the  long-lived  dynasty  of  the  Isaidae  had 
fallen,  it  was  but  natural  that  the  hope  of  national  inde- 
pendence should  center  on  some  descendant  of  this  distin- 
guished family.     The  theocratic  interests  of  the  priesthood 
tended  to  check  such  political  aspirations.     The  Macca- 
baean  insurrection  started  among  country  priests  from  re- 
ligious motives.     Through  these  inspired  heroes  the  faithful 
expected  the  world  to  be  conquered.     Patriotic  souls,  im- 
pressed   with    Israel's    moral    and    religious    superiority, 
watched  the  Hasmonaean  restoration  of  the  Davidic  king- 
dom with  a  sense  of  manifest  destiny.     Out  of  this  eschato- 
logical  mood  the  Messianic  hope  in  its  strictest  sense  was 
born,  when  the  Roman  eagles  had  swooped  down  upon  the 
land.     This  mood  had  found  expression,  since  the  exile,  in 
many  an  eager  look  into  the  future.     It  is  an  abuse  of  the 
term  "Messianic,"  however,  to  apply  it  to  expressions  of 
hope  for  deliverance  from  oppression,  victory  over  enemies, 
great  changes  in  the  world,  or  a  good  time  to  come,  where. 


52  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZAEETH 

these  contain  no  allusion  whatever  to  a  Messiah.  This  is 
only  a  source  of  confusion.  Those  who  recognize  that  there 
is  no  Christology  of  the  Old  Testament  would  better  avoid  a 
term  properly  understood  as  indicating  that  a  passage 
refers  to  Christ  and  his  kingdom. 

Although  these  utterances  of  poets  and  seers  in  Israel  do 
not  present  the  life  and  character  of  Jesus,  and  must  be 
misinterpreted  to  yield  prophecies  even  of  the  Messiah  his 
contemporaries  expected,  their  value  is  very  great.  They 
breathe  the  atmosphere  of  hope.  It  is  not  the  bracing  air 
of  the  great,  sad  prophets  of  doom  who  were  before  the 
exile.  But  men  live  by  it.  It  matters  little  that  the  star 
of  Jacob  sank  in  blood,  that  Heldai's  crown1  never  adorned 
Zerubbabel's  brow,  that  no  son  of  David  ever  crushed  the 
nations  as  worthless  vessels.  As  a  fact  of  history,  as  a  les- 
son for  the  race,  it  was  important  that  this  people  should 
see  its  visions,  dream  its  dreams,  and  rise  from  repeated 
disenchantments  to  new  flights  of  hope. 

A  type  is  a  stamp  that  bears  the  effigy  to  be  impressed 
upon  something,  e.  g.,  a  coin,  or,  by  derivation,  the  effigy 
itself  in  the  stamp.  The  impression  in  the  coin  is  the  anti- 
type. Metaphorically,  a  type  is  any  object  containing  an 
image,  that  is  an  analogy,  by  which  it  is  fitted  to  represent, 
by  the  operation  of  the  mind,  another  object.  The  type 
contributes  nothing  to  the  antitype.  It  only  shadows  forth 
the  outEnes  of  the  object  represented.  It  suggests  it.  It 
is  a  sign.  But  it  differs  from  a  sacrament  by  being  transi- 
tory in  its  nature,  not  permanent,  a  sign  of  future,  not  of 
present,  grace. 

There  are  different  classes  of  types.  They  may  be  di- 
vided into  the  following  categories:  I,  Typical  Sacra- 
ments; II,  Typical  Miracles;  III,  Typical  Persons;  IV, 
Typical  Sacrifices;  V,  Typical  Ablutions;  VI,  Typical  in- 
struments; VII,  Typical  Places;  VIII,  Typical  Festivals; 
IX,  Typical  Visions ;  X,  Typical  Enemies.2 

1  Zech.,  VI,  10, 11. 

8  This  classification  has  been  taken  from  the  great  work  of  Anton 
Hulsius,  Nucleus  Prophetiae,  Leiden,  1683.  The  illustrations  of  each 


THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  BASIS  53 

The  first  type,  like  the  first  prophecy,  was  given  to  man 
in  the  garden  of  Eden.  The  tree  of  life  was  a  sacramental 
type.  Not  the  fruit  itself,  but  the  faith  that  expressed 
itself  in  the  act  of  eating  it  had  the  power  of  giving  eternal 
life;  just  as  the  fruit  of  the  forbidden  tree  had  no  virtue 
to  bestow  knowledge  of  good  and  evil  aside  from  the  dis- 
obedience shown  in  eating  it.  After  the  fall,  the  first  typ- 
ical sacrament  instituted  was  circumcision.1  This  sign  of 
the  covenant  was  a  seal  of  Abraham's  justification  by  faith,2 
and  typified  baptism,  the  sign  of  the  new  covenant.  Sim- 
ilarly, the  paschal  lamb3  was  a  type  of  Christ4  appropriated 
in  the  eucharist.5  Miracles,  like  the  deliverance  of  Noah 
from  the  flood6  and  the  Israelites  from  the  Red  Sea,7  and 
the  supply  of  manna  from  heaven,8  and  water  from  the 
rock9  were  also  types  of  the  Christian  sacraments.10 

Adam,  the  man  of  earth,  was  a  type  of  Christ,  the  man 
from  heaven.11  Abraham,  who  looked  for  the  city  that  hath 
the  foundations,  was  a  type  of  the  militant  and  aspiring 
church.12  Sarah  typified  the  celestial  Jerusalem,  Hagar  the 
terrestrial,  Isaac  all  believers  in  Christ.13  Melchizedek,  the 
priest-king  "without  genealogy, "  who  blessed  Abraham 
and  received  tithes  from  him,  was  a  type  of  the  eternal  Son 
of  God.14  Jacob  and  Esau  typified  the  elect  and  the  non- 
class  have  also  been  largely  drawn  from  this  source.  There  is  no  bet- 
ter guide.  This  Leiden  professor  was  a  man  of  profound  erudition 
and  remarkable  keenness  of  judgment,  thoroughly  familiar  with  an- 
cient and  modern  Jewish  interpretations  and  not  affected  by  critical 
thought.  The  value  of  his  work  was  recognized  by  Hengstenberg, 
who  was  greatly  indebted  to  it.  Fairbairn's  book  Typology  of  Scrip- 
ture (6th  ed.  1880),  is  far  less  comprehensive  and  satisfactory  than 
that  of  Hulsius  as  a  statement  of  orthodox  doctrine,  defends  it  with 
less  ingenuity  and  acuteness,  and  is  not  a  whit  more  critical.  There 
is  no  modern  work  through  which  a  student  can  readily  learn  what 
has  become  of  typology,  what  was  its  fatal  error,  and  what  was  the 
truth  that  gave  it  such  a  power.  Yet  it  is  intrinsically  quite  as  impor- 
tant as  ' '  Messianic  prophecy. ' ' 

1  Gen.,  xvii.  2  Bom.,  iv,  11.  » Ex.,  xii.  *  II  Cor.,  v,  7.  B  John,  vi, 
53.  *Gen.,  vii.  7 Ex.,  xiv,  21  ff.  ' Ex.,  xvi.  'Ex.,  xvii.  10I  Pet., 
iii,  17;  I  Cor.,  x,  1-4.  "  I  Cor.,  xv,  45-49.  *>  He*.,  xi,  10.  "  Gal.,  iv, 
26  ff.  "Heb.,  vii,  1  ff. 


54  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZAEETH 

elect.1  Moses,  as  the  mediator  of  a  covenant,  was  a  type  of 
Christ.2  Priests,  prophets  and  kings  were  types  of  Christ 
and  his  people. 

Already  Abel's  sacrifice,  acceptable  because  bloody, 
piacular  and  offered  in  faith,  was  a  type  of  Christ 's  atoning 
death.3  Even  more  adequately  was  this  death  fore- 
shadowed in  Gen.  xxii,  where  Abraham  undertakes  to  offer 
his  only-begotten  son.  The  sacrificial  system  ordained  by 
God  through  Moses,  by  constantly  emphasizing  the  thought 
that  without  the  shedding  of  blood  there  could  be  no  for- 
giveness of  sins,  pointed  typically  to  the  only  offering  whose 
blood  could  really  atone  for  sin.4  The  regulations  concern- 
ing the  animals  to  be  offered  and  the  time  and  manner  of 
their  presentation  prefigured  the  perfection  of  Christ's 
sacrifice.  The  ablutions  prescribed  in  the  law  were  types 
of  the  cleansing  from  impurity  in  the  blood  of  Christ, 
accomplished  in  the  new  covenant  through  the  Holy  Spirit 
by  means  of  baptism.  The  ark  of  the  covenant,  the  altar 
and  the  ephod  all  were  types  of  Christ,  his  sacrifice,  and 
his  righteousness  in  which  the  believer  is  clothed. 

The  heavenly  temple  in  which  Christ  presented  his  sacri- 
fice5 was  the  antitype  of  tabernacle,  temple  and  asylum. 
The  sacred  seasons  ordained  by  Moses  were  types  of  the 
spiritual  blessings  in  Christ,  and  also  of  the  sacred  seasons 
of  Christendom.  Thus  the  Jewish  sabbath  on  the  seventh 
day  prefigured  the  Christian  sabbath  on  the  day  of  Christ 's 
resurrection,  the  Passover,  the  Easter  festival,  and  the  Feast 
of  Weeks,  the  Pentecost  celebrating  the  gift  of  the  Holy 
Spirit. 

Besides  visions  concerning  the  future  of  their  own  people, 
the  prophets  were  also  given  visions  in  which  the  church 
universal  and  invisible  was  typically  set  forth.  In  such 
cases  the  angel  of  the  covenant,  i.  e.,  the  pre-existent  Christ 
himself,  appeared  and  presented  his  church  under  the  figure 
of  an  acceptable  offering,6  angels  ascending  on  a  ladder,7  a 

*Rom.,  ix,  11.  *Gal,  iii,  19.  *Heb.,  xii,  24.  'Hel.,  ix,  13,  14. 
5  Heb.,  ix,  24.  e  Gen.,  xv.  r  Gen.,  xxviii. 


THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  BASIS  55 

bush  burning  yet  never  consumed,1  or  a  temple.2  The  great 
enemy  of  Christ  and  his  church,  the  devil,  was  typified  by 
Pharaoh,  Nebuchadnezzar,  and  Antiochus  Epiphanes. 

Such  were  the  types  generally  recognized  by  Protestant 
scholars  before  modern  criticism  began  to  cast  discredit  on 
typology.  Catholic  theologians  would  have  included  many 
more,  and  given  to  some  a  different  interpretation.  The 
critical  study  of  the  Hebrew  Scriptures  has  eliminated  these 
types.  Messianic  prophecy  still  figures  in  recent  works  on 
the  religion  of  Israel,  though  the  term  "  Messianic "  no 
longer  conveys  its  old  meaning;  but  one  now  looks  in  vain 
for  a  single  word  on  the  subject  of  typology.  We  shall  find 
abundant  reason,  however,  when  our  survey  of  the  field  is 
concluded,  to  recognize  beneath  all  that  may  have  seemed 
merely  fanciful  or  fantastic  an  element  of  reality.  The 
successive  cycles  of  experience,  as  reflected  in  history,  are 
not  unrelated,  they  have  their  similarities  and  correspond- 
ences in  their  common  relation  to  the  unchanging  facts  of 
nature  and  of  life. 

No  tree  of  life  ever  grew  on  earth.  It  offered  its  fruits 
of  immortality  only  in  the  mythical  gardens  of  the  gods. 
Circumcision  was  not  a  custom  peculiar  to  the  Jews.  It 
was  practised  by  Edomites,  Moabites,  and  Ammonites,  Ca- 
naanites,  Egyptians,  Midianites  and  numerous  other  peo- 
ples.8 Originally  it  was  a  sacrifice  of  holy  blood  to  the 
tribal  deity  on  entering  the  cult-community  at  the  age  of 
puberty,  possibly  regarded  as  an  abbreviated  phallic  sac- 

1  Ex.,  iii.     2  Eselc.,  xl,  ff. 

'Cf.  Jer.,  ix,  25;  Herodotus,  ii,  36;  Philo,  ii,  210,  ed.  Mangey; 
Diod,  Sic.,  iii,  31;  Strabo,  xvii,  824;  Ploss,  Das  Kind  in  Branch 
und  Sitte  der  Volker*  1882,  I,  842  f.;  article  Circumcision  by  Ben- 
zinger  in  the  Encyclopaedia  Biblica.  In  regard  to  Egypt  it  is  of  inter- 
est to  notice  that  the  man  represented  on  a  plaque  now  in  the  Louvre, 
published  by  Heuzey  in  Bulletin  de  correspondence  Jiellenique,  1892, 
p.  307  f .  and  pi.  I,  as  being  gored  by  a  bull,  is  manifestly  circumcised. 
That  he  is  an  Egyptian  and  likely  to  have  lived  in  the  days  before 
Mena,  has  been  shown  by  Georg  Steindorff  in  Aegyptiaca,  Fest- 
schrift fur  Georg  Ebers,  1897,  p.  128  ff.  But  circumcision  is  not 
likely  to  have  been  a  novelty  in  the  world  even  in  the  sixth  millen- 
nium B.  C. 


56  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZAEETH 

rifice.1  Later  it  was  transferred  to  infancy  as  a  dedicatory 
rite.  In  the  New  Testament  it  is  not  a  type  of  baptism, 
but  of  the  removal  of  a  carnal  disposition.  Unquestion- 
ably, baptism,  in  its  development  from  the  immersion  of 
adults  to  the  sprinkling  of  infants,  shows  a  marked  similar- 
ity to  circumcision.  But  the  religious  bath  has  a  different 
origin  and  significance ;  and  the  later  transformation  of  the 
rite  to  adapt  it  to  the  same  purpose  as  circumcision  is  wholly 
foreign  to  the  New  Testament  where  the  antitype  should 
appear.  The  Pesach,  or  Leap  Feast,  as  it  was  called,  prob- 
ably because  of  the  gamboling  of  the  young  animals  at  the 
time  when  firstlings  were  offered  to  Yahwe,  gradually  be- 
came a  memorial  of  the  deliverance  from  Egypt.  No  Israel- 
ite could  have  thought  of  the  Messiah  in  connection  with 
the  paschal  lamb.  It  was  the  death  of  Jesus  and  the  sup- 
posed reference  to  him  in  Isa.  liii,  7,  that  led  to  this  remark- 
able conception.  The  idea  of  a  suffering  Messiah,  with 
which  even  the  disciples  of  Jesus  are  entirely  unfamiliar, 
does  not  appear  in  Rabbinic  writings  until  centuries  later. 
If  the  eucharist  is  suggested  in  John  vi,  53,  the  idea  of  a 
material  appropriation  of  Christ  therein  is  clearly  rejected 
by  the  assertion:  "The  flesh  profiteth  nothing,  the  words 
that  I  have  spoken  unto  you  are  spirit  and  are  life/'  vi,  63.2 
The  story  of  the  deluge  is  a  myth  of  Babylonian  origin, 
ultimately  founded  on  a  constantly  recurring  natural  phe- 
nomenon.3 The  crossing  of  the  Red  Sea  by  aid  of  a  miracle, 
the  manna  falling  down  from  heaven,  and  the  water  issuing 
from  a  rock  that,  in  the  last  version,  moves  along  with  the 
Israelites  through  the  desert,4  belong  to  legendary  lore. 
That  the  development  of  such  folk-tales  should  have  been 
divinely  intended  to  prefigure  the  services  rendered  by 

*Cf.  Schmidt,  article  Circumcision  in  the  New  International  Ency- 
clopedia, 1902. 

2Cf.  Schmidt,  The  Character  of  Christ's  Last  Meal  in  Journal  of 
Biblical  Literature,  1892,  p.  20. 

*Cf.  Hermann  Usener,  Die  Sintfluthsagen,  1899;  P.  Jensen,  Die 
Kosmologie  der  Bdbylonier,  1890,  p.  365  ff. 

*I  Cor.,  x,  1-4. 


THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  BASIS  57 

Jesus  to  the  world,  or  the  fictitious  values  ascribed  to  ecclesi- 
astical rites,  is  difficult  to  believe. 

Adam  is  not  a  historic  personality.  Abram,  the  numen 
of  Hebron,  and  his  consort  and  sister  Sarah1  are  not  likely 
to  have  walked  upon  the  earth  as  human  beings.  Even  in 
the  early  legends,  Abraham  does  not  look  for  a  celestial  city, 
and  Sarah 's  character  is  not  suggestive  of  a  heavenly  Jeru- 
salem. Hagar,  in  the  legend  a  Muzrite  slave,  in  reality 
seems  to  have  been  an  Arabian  tribe.2  Before  an  allegoriz- 
ing interpretation  capable  of  finding  any  desired  meaning 
in  any  text  had  come  into  vogue,  no  person  would  have 
thought  of  seeing  in  this  figure  a  mountain  in  Arabia,3  or  a 
religious  community  in  bondage  to  the  letter.  Isaac,  the 
benignantly  smiling  El  of  Beersheba,  or  the  characterless 
hero  offered  by  his  father,  could  not  have  led  men  in  Israel 
to  think  of  the  Messiah.  The  name  Melchizedek,  signifying 
"the  god  Zedek  is  my  king,"  may  have  formed  a  part  of 
the  earlier  stratum  in  Gen.  xiv ;  the  role  Melchizedek  plays 
is  generally  recognized  as  one  of  the  latest  midrashic  crea- 
tions in  the  Hebrew  Bible.  That  a  king  is  also  a  priest,  is 
a  common  occurrence  in  history,  and  that  a  foreign  king's 
pedigree  is  unknown,  cannot  be  deemed  strange.  But  when 
Simon  was  proclaimed  high-priest  and  prince  in  141  B.  C., 
a  poet  was  glad  to  discover  a  precedent  in  Melchizedek 's 
case  for  a  divinely  recognized  pontificate  and  royalty  out- 
side of  the  Aaronid  and  Davidic  families,  Ps.  ex.  Not 
until  the  author  of  Hebrews  felt  the  necessity  of  vindicat- 
ing for  Jesus  the  right  of  exercising  priestly  functions,  is 
it  likely  that  any  one  dreamed  of  regarding  the  fact  that 
Melchizedek 's  parentage  was  not  mentioned  as  an  indication 

*In  Babylonia,  Ishtar  is  also  called  sharratu,  sometimes  sister, 
sometimes  daughter,  of  Sin. 

8  In  Aegyptiaca,  Festschrift  fur  Georg  Ebers,  1897,  p.  25  ff.,  Hom- 
mel  gives  an  account  of  a  list  of  hierodules  from  different  parts  of 
Arabia  and  neighboring  countries  found  among  Glaser's  inscriptions. 
Some  of  the  women  come  from  Hagar.  Winckler  compares  the  Ha- 
garites  of  I  Chron.,  v,  10,  19,  20,  Musri,  Meluhha,  Main  1898,  p.  51,  in 
Mitteiungen  der  Vorderasiatischen  Gesellschaft. 

•  Gal.  iv,  25. 


58  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZAKETH 

of  the  pre-existence  of  the  Son  of  God,  or  found  in  the 
priest-king  of  Salem  an  intimation  of  the  character  and 
work  of  the  ascended  Christ.  Jacob  and  Esau  are  the 
eponymous  heroes  of  the  two  nations,  Israel  and  Edom. 
That  Yahwe  of  his  own  free  grace  had  chosen  Israel  was 
the  corollary  drawn  by  the  author  of  Isa.  xl-xlviii  from  his 
conviction  that  the  only  living  God,  the  Maker  of  heaven 
and  earth,  was  none  other  than  the  God  of  his  fathers.  He 
hurled  from  Yahwe 's  presence  the  gods  of  the  nations  as 
lifeless  statues  without  making  his  tribal  god  large  enough 
to  fill  the  vacant  places.  From  this  error  a  certain  form  of 
the  doctrine  of  election  suffers.  It  does  not  shadow  forth 
the  larger  truth  that  Jesus  touched.  The  accounts  that  have 
come  down  to  us  of  the  Sinaitic  covenant  are  centuries  later 
than  the  time  of  Moses,  and  cannot  be  used  as  historic  doc- 
uments.1 Priests,  prophets  and  kings  were  not  peculiar  to 
Israel.  Those  pre-exilic  prophets  whose  moral  earnestness 
made  the  richest  contribution  to  the  religious  life  of  the 
nation  had  indeed  much  in  common  with  the  Jesus  of  his- 
tory, but  for  this  very  reason  were  less  suggestive  of  the 
Christ  they  have  been  supposed  to  typify. 

Sacrifices  are  common  to  all  peoples.  Whether  they  are 
preponderatingly  animal  or  vegetable,  depends  to  some 
extent  upon  the  climate,  and  even  more  upon  social  condi- 
tions. Cain's  offering  (Gen.  iv,  3)  is  no  doubt  spurned 
because  of  its  character,  but  this  character  is  determined  by 
a  peculiar  mode  of  life.  The  Kenites  had  settled  down  to 
agricultural  life,  and  the  offerings  brought  to  their  Yahwe 
sanctuaries  consisted  of  vegetables.  On  the  other  hand,  the 
destroyed  tribe  Abel  followed  the  nomadic  life,  and 
brought  to  Yahwe,  as  did  the  patriarchs,  the  firstlings  of 
their  flocks.  But  if  this  tribe  was  crowded  out  of  existence 
by  the  Kenites,  they  were  forced  themselves  from  their 
beloved  shrines  into  the  steppe,  without  even  recognized 
pasture-grounds,  and  would  have  been  exterminated  but 

1  Schmidt,  article  Covenant  in  the  Encyclopaedia  Biblica. 


THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  BASIS  59 

for  the  Yahwe  sign  they  bore,  probably  circumcision.1 
There  is  nothing  in  this  story  that  would  have  led  a  Jewish 
reader  to  think  of  the  Messiah. 

The  story  of  Abraham's  trial  is  evidently  told  to  show 
both  the  value  of  human  sacrifices  and  the  legitimacy  of 
animal  substitutes  for  them.  The  first-born,  whether  of 
man  or  beast,  belongs  to  Yahwe.  They  were  once  sacrificed 
before  the  custom  of  redeeming  the  human  offspring  devel- 
oped. No  sacrifice  could  be  more  precious,  no  religious 
faith  perfect  that  would  be  unwilling  to  render  it.  Yet 
Yahwe  graciously  accepts  the  will  for  the  deed  and  is 
satisfied  with  a  ram  as  a  substitute.  In  this  case,  the  human 
sacrifice  is  manifestly  not  intended  as  an  atonement  for  sin, 
but  only  as  a  voluntary  offering. 

In  the  earlier  parts  of  the  sacrificial  legislation,  all  of 
post-Mosaic  origin,  the  centre  of  the  cult  is  the  sacrificial 
meal,  while  in  the  later  portions,  dating  from  the  Persian 
period,  the  emphasis  lies  on  the  atonement.  By  this  is 
meant  the  restoration  of  the  ability  to  participate  in  the 
cult  after  a  forfeiture  of  this  privilege  by  sin.  The  "sin" 
does  not  always  imply  moral  obliquity,  and  a  changed  moral 
attitude  is  not  required  for  the  effectiveness  of  the  sacrifice. 
An  awakening  scepticism  might  question  whether  the  blood 
of  bulls  and  goats  could  really  remove  sin,  but  neither  the 
law  nor  the  temple  practice  suggested  a  doubt  on  this  score. 
Those  who  believed  the  divine  assurance  that,  if  they  offered 
a  certain  sacrifice,  their  sin  would  be  forgiven,  had  no  right 
to  look  upon  it  with  misgivings,  or  occasion  to  desire  a 
better  sacrifice.  If  animal  sacrifices  were  divinely  ordained 
for  the  removal  of  sin,  the  apostolic  premise  is  false.  If  the 
blood  of  bulls  cannot  take  away  sin,  such  sacrifices  cannot 
have  been  divinely  ordained  for  that  purpose.  If  they  were 
ordained,  not  to  take  away  sin,  but  to  make  men  conscious 

*It  is  the  merit  of  Stade  to  have  suggested  the  true  interpretation 
of  this  story,  Das  Kainszeichen  in  Zeitschrift  fur  Alttestamentische 
Wissenschaft,  1894,  p.  250.  He  thinks  of  a  sign  on  the  forehead. 
Circumscision,  which  seems  to  have  been  practised  with  great  zeal 
among  the  Midianities,  is  more  likely  to  be  the  sign. 


60  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZAEETH 

of  their  inability  to  do  so  and  thereby  to  point  to  a  more 
valuable  sacrifice,  the  avowed  purpose  is  deceptive,  and  the 
real  one  concealed.  Rather  than  pointing  forward  to  a 
divinely-demanded  sacrifice  of  an  innocent  human  being  as 
a  propitiation  for  the  guilty,  the  institution  of  animal 
offerings  must  have  led  thoughtful  minds  to  look  back  with 
gratitude  to  the  abolition  of  human  sacrifices. 

Ablutions,  in  Israel  as  among  other  nations,  served  the 
purpose  of  washing  away  the  contagious  sanctity  communi- 
cated by  touching  tabued  objects,  such  as  articles  used  in 
the  cult,  dead  bodies  (the  earthly  habitat  of  beings  that 
have  joined  the  Elohim-circle),  lepers  (smitten  of  God),  or 
impurity  as,  in  many  instances,  it  was  later  felt  to  be.  The 
lustrations  out  of  which  baptism  grew  no  doubt  had  the 
same  origin.1  But  it  is  not  likely  that  any  Hebrew  who 
washed  himself  after  touching  a  corpse  was  by  this  act 
caused  to  think  either  of  the  coming  Christ  or  of  Christian 
baptism. 

Sacred  chests  were  used  in  the  worship  of  many  gods. 
The  two  stones,  supposed  to  contain  a  decalogue  not 
written  until  long  after  the  ark  had  finally  disappeared, 
were  probably  none  else  than  the  oracle-stones  Urim  and* 
Thummim2  that  were  used  like  the  seven  arrows  of  Hubal 
in  Mecca.  All  gods  had  altars.  The  ephod  was  originally 

1  Schneckenburger  thought  it  probable  that  even  the  baptism  of 
John  was  a  self -lustration,  TJeber  das  Alter  der  jiidischen  Proselyten- 
Taufe,  1828,  p.  92  f .    Brandt  is  of  the  opinion  that  John  set  the  ex- 
ample of  frequent  self -immersions  and  hence  received  the  name  of 
' '  Baptist, ' '  Die  Evangelische  Geschichte,  1893,  p.  45  ff .    Brandt,  like 
Schneckenburger,  assumes  that  the  baptism  of  proselytes  is  later  than 
the  time  of  John.     Arrian's  statement,  Disputatio  Epicteti  i,  9,  which 
Schneckenburger    wrongly    sought    to    invalidate,    is    probably    our 
earliest  testimony.     It  is  good  only  for  the  middle  of  the  second 
century.     It  is  likely  that  proselyte  baptism  was  nothing  but  the 
first  sacred  bath  enjoined  upon  a  convert  in  earlier  times,  and  would 
not  differ  in  character  from  any  other  lustration. 

2  Cf .  Muss-Arnolt,  The  Urim  and  Thummim,  Am.  Journ.  of  Semitic 
Languages,  July,  1900,  p.  1  ff. 


THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  BASIS  61 

in  Israel  a  molten  image  of  Yah  we.1  Gideon's  ephod  at 
Ophrah  was  an  idol  made  of  seventeen  hundred  shekels  of 
gold.2  Sacred  stones,  trees,  fountains,  mountain  tops,  arti- 
ficial mounds,  houses  and  cities  are  not  peculiar  to  Israel, 
or  to  the  Semitic  nations.  They  are  found  in  every  race 
and  nation.  The  tabernacle  in  the  wilderness  is  evidently 
a  work  of  imagination  copied  from  the  Solomonic  temple. 
This  temple  itself  was  built  upon  Phoenician  models  by 
Tyrian  architects  and  workmen.  From  first  to  last  this 
royal  sanctuary  seems  to  have  been  the  home  of  other  gods 
beside  Yahwe.  Zerubbabel's  temple,  though  smaller,  was 
made  more  glorious  by  a  purer  cult.  Yet  many  felt  that 
Yahwe  had  never  come  to  reside  in  this  temple.3  Herod 
built  temples  to  many  gods,  following  more  or  less  his  own 
taste.  The  only  sanctuary  declared  to  have  been  built  ac- 
cording to  the  heavenly  pattern  probably  never  existed 
except ' '  on  paper. '  '*  The  cities  of  refuge  were  all  old  sanc- 
tuaries where  the  old  gods  in  one  form  or  another  continued 
to  be  worshiped,  and  safety  was  sought  by  murderers  at  the 
horns  of  the  altars. 

Where  gods  are  worshiped,  there  are  sacred  days.  There 
are  days  dedicated  to  solar,  lunar  and  astral  deities;  there 
are  days  when  the  lords  of  the  harvest  are  praised  for  their 

*Cf.  Castelli,  Storia  degl'  Israelite,  1888,  ii,  p.  457;  G.  F.  Moore, 
Ephod  in  the  Encyclopaedia  Biblica. 

2  Judges,  viii,  27. 

•So  for  instance  "MalacM,"  iii,  1. 

*W.  Shaw  Caldecott  in  The  Tabernacle,  London,  1904,  has  at- 
tempted to  prove  that  this  pattern  existed  before  Solomon's  temple 
by  the  remarkable  ruin  called  Bamet  el  Khalil,  north  of  Hebron, 
which  he  regards  as  a  sacred  enclosure  made  "to  screen  an  altar,  as 
the  hangings  of  the  tabernacle  courts  screened  its  altar  from  curious 
and  irreverent  eyes,"  and  seeks  to  identify  these  tl monolithic  (sic!) 
stone  walls"  as  the  Eamah  of  Samuel.  The  identification  is  improb- 
able, but  the  suggestion  as  to  its  original  purpose  deserves  consider- 
ation. It  is  impossible  to  examine  this  curious  structure  without 
being  impressed  by  its  unique  character  and  high  antiquity.  It  is 
difficult  to  believe  that  it  was  ever  higher  than  it  is.  Only  excava- 
tions can  determine  its  depth.  It  has  no  similarity  to  the  sacred 
enclosures  of  the  Negeb  examined  by  the  present  writer. 


THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZAEETH 


bounties.  Of  lunar  origin  are  the  festivals  of  the  new 
moon  and  the  sabbath,  celebrating  the  appearance  of  the 
moon-god  and  the  chief  incidents  of  his  course.  The  new 
moons  were  no  doubt  already  observed  in  Arabia  by  the 
clans,  afterwards  forming  a  part  of  Israel,  that  occasionally 
worshiped  at  the  mountain-shrine  of  the  moon-god  Sin 
(Sinai).  Another  survival  from  the  nomadic  period  was 
probably  the  Passover,  or  Leap  Feast,1  when  the  first-born 
of  man  and  beast  were  offered.  If  Yahwe  cannot  have 
these  offerings  in  the  wilderness,  an  early  legend  tells  us, 
he  will  make  good  his  loss  by  slaying  all  the  first-born  of 
man  and  beast  in  Egypt.2  The  three  great  annual  feasts 
of  Unleavened  Bread,  of  Weeks,  and  of  Booths,  had  orig- 
inally a  purely  agrarian  character,  celebrating  the  ingath- 
ering of  barley  and  wheat  in  the  spring,  and  the  vintage  in 
the  autumn.  Gradually  they  were  transformed  into  me- 
morials of  important  events.  It  is  not  probable  that  any 
Hebrew  ever  connected  with  any  of  these  feasts  the  thought 
of  deliverance  from  sin  through  the  atoning  death  of  a 
coming  Messiah.  Still  less  were  the  festivals  of  the  Chris- 
tian year  suggested  by  them.  Among  the  early  Christians 
there  were  those  who  looked  upon  all  sacred  days,  including 
the  sabbaths,  as  carnal  ordinances  no  longer  to  be  observed 
in  the  new  dispensation.3  The  New  Testament  furnishes  no 
intimation  yet  of  an  intention  to  substitute  the  first  day  of 
the  week  for  the  seventh  as  a  sabbath,  but  it  was  quite 
natural  that  the  " venerable  day  of  the  Sun,"  like  the 
Saturnalia  and  other  Koman  festivals,  should  in  course  of 
time  be  adopted  for  Christian  use. 

Visions  were  seen  by  men  and  women  in  Israel  as  in 
other  nations.  These  were  perhaps  for  the  most  part  gen- 
uine ecstatic  experiences.  But  there  is  absolutely  no  ev- 
idence that  any  Hebrew  prophet  ever  saw  a  being  whom  he 
recognized  as  the  pre-exist ent  Christ,  or  an  object  that  he 
could  possibly  interpret  as  representing  an  invisible  and 

1  So  called  from  the  gamboling  of  the  young. 

2  Ex.,  vii,  16;  x,  25  ff.;  xi,  1-8, 
8  Gal.,  iv,  10, 


THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  BASIS  63 

universal  church.  The  " angel  of  the  covenant"  in  Mai. 
iii,  1,  is  the  celestial  representative  of  Israel.  The  "angel 
of  Yahwe"  is,  as  Gunkel  has  seen,1  a  later  substitute  for 
Yahwe  himself  in  the  texts  where  he  occurs,  and  there  is 
no  reason  for  supposing  that  this  substitute  was  understood 
as  being  the  Messiah.  The  "invisible  church"  was  a  cre- 
ation of  sixteenth  century  theology  in  its  dilemma  between 
disowning  a  visible  church  that  cast  out  heretics  but  also 
held  rich  treasures  of  spiritual  life,  and  owning  a  visible 
church  that  was  a  voluntary  association  of  persons  having  a 
common  religious  interest  but  therefore  also  excluded  the 
little  ones.  This  conception  might  have  brought  about  a 
very  lofty  fellowship,  had  it  not  been  chained  to  earth  by 
an  irrational  view  of  "the  Word  and  the  Sacraments." 
Neither  prophets  nor  apostles  ever  dreamed  of  this  invisible 
church.  The  latter  thought  of  a  heavenly  Jerusalem;  but 
this  was  a  city  destined  to  come  down  to  earth  and  be  seen 
of  all  men,  not  a  church  existing  only  in  the  souls  of 
believers.  Yahwe  was  once  supposed  to  dwell  in  the  dark- 
ness of  the  stormcloud,  and  to  reveal  his  real  nature  in  the 
sheen  of  the  lightning.  Hence  a  mysterious  fire  betokens 
his  presence  in  Abraham's  sacrifice,2  and  in  the  burning 
bush.3  Originally  the  ladder  from  Bethel  to  heaven  was 
for  the  use  of  gods  whose  abode  was  in  the  atmosphere  or  in 
the  stars.  Such  ladders  are  known  to  other  religions. 
Angels  are  degraded  gods.  The  temple  described  in  Ez. 
xl-xlviii  is  just  such  a  house  as  the  author  thought  that  the 
restored  sanctuary  in  Jerusalem  should  be.  There  is  no 
suggestion  of  anything  but  a  material  structure.  In  the 
case  of  Pharao  and  Nebuchadnezzar  there  is  no  hint  that 
they  were  typical  of  the  devil;  and  when  the  author  of 
Daniel  represented  Antiochus  IV  as  a  beast4  he  did  not  know 

1  Genesis,  1901,  p.  170  f . 

2  Gen.,  xv,  17. 

•  Ex.,  iii,  2.  Cf .  Dillmann,  Die  Bucher  Exodus  und  Leviticus,  1880, 
p.  27. 

4  Cf .  W.  Bousset,  Der  Antichrist,  1895,  and  Schmidt  in  Journal  of 
Biblical  Literature,  1900,  p.  23  ff. 


64          THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZAEETH 

that  this  chaos-monster  would  later  as  a  dragon  be  made  the 
Antichrist  and  the  Devil. 

The  reason  why  modern  learning  has  abandoned  this  once 
so  flourishing  field  of  typology  is  readily  perceived.  It  can 
find  no  place  in  history  for  many  persons,  events  and  insti- 
tutions regarded  as  types.  What  at  one  time  seemed 
unique  is  now  seen  to  be  the  common  expression  of  religious 
feeling.  To  an  adequately  trained  historic  sense  it  is  quite 
obvious  that  the  men  whose  views  of  life  are  revealed  in  the 
Hebrew  Scriptures  can  never  have  associated  with  their 
religious  institutions  any  such  thought  of  Christ  and  his 
church  as  the  typical  interpretation  assumes.  If  this  inter- 
pretation is  modified  so  as  to  affirm  only  the  divinely  in- 
tended typical  significance,  not  the  consciousness  on  the 
part  of  the  Old  Testament  saints  of  such  a  meaning,  the 
redemptive  value  of  a  faith  that  looks  beyond  the  type  to 
the  antitype  is  surrendered,  and  the  utility  of  the  type  both 
to  those  who  were  ignorant  of  its  importance  and  to  those 
who  no  longer  needed  it  may  be  questioned. 

Yet  there  is  no  error  that  does  not  contain  an  element  of 
truth.  Typology  observed,  compared  and  classified  facts. 
It  perceived  the  succession  of  analogous  formations.  It 
discerned  the  periodicity  of  history.  It  read  the  future  in 
the  light  of  the  past,  the  history  of  earth  in  the  light  of 
heaven.  This  was  a  marked  step  forward  in  the  direction 
of  modern  learning.  "That  is  not  first  which  is  spiritual 
but  that  which  is  natural"  is  not  precisely  the  doctrine  of 
evolution,  which  affirms  that  the  spiritual  grows  out  of  the 
natural,  but  it  is  the  statement  of  a  correctly  observed  fact 
essential  to  the  truth  of  this  doctrine.  The  division  of  his- 
tory into  dispensations  absolutely  distinct,  yet  constantly 
suggestive  one  of  another,  may  be  artificial,  but  it  is  now 
generally  recognized  that,  owing  to  the  substantial  identity 
of  physical  environment  and  of  mental  processes,  different 
periods  show  a  most  remarkable  analogy  of  development.1 
It  is  impossible  at  present  to  share  the  fundamental  assump- 

*€£.  the  thoughtful  address  by  Ulrich  von  Wilamowitz-Moellen- 
dorff  on  Welt-perioden,  Gottingen,  1897. 


THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  BASIS 


tion  on  which  antiquity  based  its  view  of  the  world.  Man 
considered  his  dwelling-place,  the  earth,  as  a  copy  of  heaven, 
the  abode  of  the  gods.  He  looked  upon  himself  as  formed 
in  the  image  of  the  gods'.  His  life  he  regarded  as  a  reflec- 
tion of  the  life  of  the  gods,  known  through  numerous  myths. 
Particularly  in  the  case  of  the  heroes,  this  mythical  lore 
furnished  reliable  legendary  information.1  Not  only  could 
the  fate  of  individuals  be  read  in  the  stars,  but  also  that  of 
the  world  itself.  The  incidents  of  the  great  cosmic  year 
could  be  watched  from  its  first  moment  to  its  last,  or  rather 
to  the  point  where  the  circle  closes  to  continue  its  round 
amid  similar  events.  When  in  Gen.  i,  2,  man  is  made  in 
the  form  of  the  gods  and  in  I  Cor.  xv,  49,  the  existence  of  a 
man  in  heaven  is  proclaimed,  whose  image  men  on  earth 
should  bear ;  when  in  Ex.  xxv,  9,  a  heavenly  pattern  of  the 
tabernacle  is  shown  to  Moses,  and  in  Heb.  ix,  23,  24,  the 
original  sanctuary  in  heaven  of  which  the  tabernacle  was  a 
copy  is  purged  by  the  Christ ;  when  the  model  of  Zion  with 
its  walls  is  constantly  in  Yahwe's  presence  in  Isa.  xlix,  16, 
and  this  heavenly  Jerusalem  comes  down  to  earth  in  Rev. 
xxi,  10,  and  when  the  first  things,  cosmogony  and  paradise, 
reappear  as  the  last  things  in  Revelation  and  elsewhere, 
these  ideas  ultimately  rest  upon  an  astrological  conception 
of  the  world.  To  a  more  critical  view  it  is  sufficiently 
apparent  that  man  has  made  his  gods  in  his  own  image, 
used  his  acquaintance  with  the  earth  in  mapping  out  the 

1  This  has  been  rightly  emphasized  by  Winckler,  Gcschichte  Israels, 
ii,  1900,  p.  275  ff.  The  secret  of  the  remarkable  stability  of  tradi- 
tion does  not  lie  in  a  miraculously  retentive  and  conscientious  mem- 
ory but  in  the  unchangeableness  of  the  celestial  spectacle  and  of  the 
myths  it  suggests.  A  limited  number  of  mythical  motives  were 
always  at  hand  to  complete,  correct  or  adorn  any  heroic  tale.  Valu- 
able as  this  observation  is,  it  may  easily  be  abused.  We  must  guard 
against  a  new  typology  with  its  ready-made  patterns  in  heaven  play- 
ing havoc  with  our  freshly  acquired  historic  sense.  The  experiences 
of  men  that  found  their  way  to  the  sky  in  mythology  have  repeated 
themselves  often  enough  in  actual  history  without  warranting  a  sus- 
picion that  they  have  each  time  dropped  down  from  heaven.  Our 
main  interest  at  present,  however,  is  that  this  new  point  of  view  be 
occupied. 
5 


66         THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZAEETH 

sky,  filled  the  heavens  with  beings  whose  fortunes  were 
known  to  him  only  from  his  own  experience,  and  found  in 
actually  observed  phenomena  of  nature's  life  answers  to  the 
perplexing  questions  whence  the  world  has  come  and 
whither  its  course  will  lead. 

The  modern  estimate  of  the  universe  recognizes  a  law  of 
evolution  according  to  which  the  life  that  now  is  has  devel- 
oped out  of  the  life  that  preceded  it.  Hence  the  similarity 
of  persons,  ideas,  institutions  and  events  in  different  ages. 
Baptism  and  eucharist  remind  of  circumcision  and  pass- 
over;  redemption  through  the  blood  of  a  human  sacrifice 
resembles  redemption  through  the  blood  of  an  animal  sacri- 
fice ;  a  Messiah  who  takes  vengeance  on  his  enemies,  con- 
quers the  nations,  and  exercises  authority  over  them  is  not 
unlike  a  David  or  an  Alexander  Jannaeus;  Sunday  and 
Easter  and  Pentecost  and  Christmas  are  quite  suggestive  of 
Sabbath  and  Passover  and  Weeks  and  Dedication;  angels 
and  hypostases,  mediating  between  Yahwe  and  the  world, 
bring  to  mind  the  mediatory  offices  ascribed  to  the  Christ. 
The  reason  for  this  is  that  the  later,  in  part  at  least,  was 
the  spiritual  offspring  of  the  earlier.  John  the  Baptist 
and  Jesus  were  the  heirs  of  Amos  and  Hosea,  Isaiah  and 
Jeremiah.  Great  men  have  their  forerunners;  important 
events  cast  their  shadows  before  them.  Times  of  spiritual 
quickening  are  preludes  upon  coming  epochs. 

The  periodicity  of  history  does  not  violate  any  law  of 
evolution.  If  Babylon  and  Egypt,  Greece  aiad  Rome,  ex- 
hausted their  creative  strength,  and  younger,  or  more 
slowly  maturing  nations,  taking  up  their  work,  had  to  run 
through  similar  stages  of  development,  this  was  partly  due 
to  the  natural  limitations  of  all  social  life,  partly  to  the 
fact  that  they  entered  only  gradually  into  the  spiritual 
heritage  left  by  their  predecessors.  New  periods  are  gen- 
erally ushered  in  by  a  strong  civilizing  element,  like  Greek 
philosophy  or  Jewish  religious  thought,  breaking  its 
national  bonds  and  seeking  universal  dominion.  The 
principle  of  rational  selection  then  comes  into  play.  Nor  is 
the  fact  of  decline  and  death  an  infringement  on  the  laws 


THE  OLD  TESTAMENT  BASIS  67 

of  evolution.  Still  to  some  extent  under  the  spell  of  a 
cosmogonie  myth  earlier  evolutionists  occasionally  spoke  of 
the  universe  as  developing  from  a  protoplasm,  created  out 
of  nothing,  into  ever  higher  and  more  complex  forms  of  life, 
even  as  the  acorn  grows  into  an  oak.  It  is  well,  however, 
not  to  forget  that,  if  the  oak  comes  out  of  the  acorn,  the 
acorn  also  comes  from  the  oak,  and  that  the  sturdiest  oak 
will  some  day  pay  its  tribute  to  corruption.  The  nebula 
from  which  our  solar  system,  with  all  the  precious  treasures 
that  it  holds,  has  come,  was  no  doubt  an  acorn  fallen  from 
some  sidereal  tree  of  life.  When  at  some  distant  day  it 
shall  have  run  its  course,  it  may  well  be  that  it  will  leave 
behind  some  seed  to  grow  up  in  its  own  time  and  place.  It 
has  not  emerged  out  of  nothing,  it  will  not  go  out  into  noth- 
ing. Like  the  astrology  of  the  past,  the  science  of  the 
present  time  looks  steadfastly  into  the  heavens  where  alone 
it  can  read  the  origin  and  destiny  of  our  planet.  And  in 
the  new  light  types  appear  again.  To  him  that  has  eyes 
to  see,  each  form  of  life,  be  it  small  or  great,  points  forward 
to  some  other  thing  that  is  to  come. 


CHAPTER  IV 

THE  JEWISH  MESSIAH 

So  far  as  documents  give  evidence,  the  expectation  of  a 
future  deliverer  of  Israel,  designated  as  the  Messiah,  seems 
to  have  appeared  for  the  first  time  soon  after  the  conquest 
of  Palestine  by  Pompey  in  63  B.  C.  It  is  found  in  the  so- 
called  Psalms  of  Solomon.  The  author  of  Ps.  Sol.  xvii, 
evidently  a  Pharisee,  looks  upon  the  rulers  of  the  Hasmo- 
naean  house  as  robbers  and  usurpers,  to  whom  the  promise 
to  David  did  not  apply  and  who  were  justly  deposed  and 
punished  by  Pompey.  As  to  Isaiah  Assyria  was  the  rod 
of  Yahwe's  anger  to  be  used  for  the  chastisement  of  his 
people  because  of  the  sins  of  the  house  of  David  and  the 
nobles  of  Judah,  and  then  to  be  broken,  so  to  this  psalmist 
Rome  is  the  divine  instrument  by  which  punishment  is 
administered  for  the  sins  of  the  "godless"  kings  who  have 
placed  themselves  on  the  throne  of  David,  and  which  is  then 
to  be  destroyed.  For  the  rightful  King  of  Israel,  the  Son 
of  David,  Yahwe's  Messiah,1  is  coming  in  the  appointed 
time  to  crush  the  unjust  rulers,  purge  Jerusalem  of  all  for- 
eign oppressors,  destroy  the  impious  heathen,  bring  to- 
gether under  his  scepter  all  Jews,  hold  the  nations  under 
his  yoke,  and  reign  as  a  guiltless2  and  God-fearing  prince 
over  a  righteous  and  holy  people.  Ps.  Sol.  xviii  praises 

VThus  undoubtedly  the  author  wrote  in  Ps.  Sol.,  xvii,  36,  ed.  Swete, 
though  a  Christian  copyist  made  it  "Christ  Lord."  Cf.  Kittel  in 
Kautzsch,  Die  Pseudepigraphen,  1900,  p.  147. 

2  That  "pure  from  sin"  does  not  mean  absolute  sinlessness  is 
evident  from  the  manner  in  which  the  psalmist  speaks  of  the  Phar- 
isees. There  will  be  no  Bathsheba  incident  in  the  story  of  the  Son  of 
David.  Though  the  Chronicler  was  silent,  the  Books  of  Samuel  still 
spoke,  and  the  blot  on  the  great  king's  memory  was  keenly  felt.  Cf. 
Ecclus.,  xlvii,  11. 

68 


THE  JEWISH  MESSIAH  69 

him  happy  who  shall  live  in  the  days  when  Yah  we 's  deliv- 
erance shall  come.  With  his  rod  Yahwe's  Messiah  will 
in  justice,  wisdom  and  strength  lead  all  his  people  in 
works  of  righteousness,  through  fear  of  God,  and  present 
them  before  the  face  of  the  Lord.1 

The  appearance  of  the  Messianic  hope  at  this  time  is 
quite  natural.  A  century  of  martial  prowess,  independence 
and  conquest  had  raised  the  highest  expectations.  The 
little  people  had  not  only  indulged  in  a  dream  of  empire ; 
it  had  imagined  itself  to  be  in  the  midst  of  the  actual  con- 
quest of  the  world.  From  these  proud  heights  it  had  been 
hurled  into  the  valley  of  humiliation.  It  had  been  rudely 
awakened  from  its  dream  to  hear  the  tax-gatherer's  voice. 
But  this  cruel  disenchantment  could  not  quench  the  spark 
of  ambition.  It  flared  up  a-new,  fanned  by  a  fresh  hatred. 
The  persecuted  Pharisees  well  knew  the  cause  of  the  calam- 
ity. It  was  the  Hasmonaean  usurpation  of  the  throne  of 
David.  To  conquer  the  Roman  power  a  genuine  son  of 
David  was  needed.  Only  to  such  an  one  could  the  divine 
promise  in  2  Sam.  vii,  12,  apply.  But  while  princes  of 
the  spurious  house  of  David  were  numerous,  real  descend- 
ants of  the  old  dynasty  could  not  easily  be  found.  In  the 
beginning  of  the  second  century  A.  D.  two  Christian  writers 
tried,  both  in  vain,  to  discover  the  branches  of  David's 
family  tree.2  It  was  not  so  easy  to  find  a  living  prince  of 
this  royal  blood  as  in  the  days  of  Jehoiachin,  Sheshbazzar, 
and  Zerubbabel. 

But  God  would  provide  in  his  own  good  time.  What  he 
had  promised,  he  would  surely  fulfil.  And  had  he  not 
promised?  The  sacred  writings  were  searched  to  discover 
promises  of  the  Messiah.  Many  Hasmonaean  psalms  had 
been  incorporated  in  "Davidic"  hymnbooks.  If  at  one 
time  " David"  was  used  as  an  appellative  to  designate  the 
king  who  took  the  place  of  David,  it  is  not  impossible  that 
the  ascription  in  some  instances  originally  intended  to 

1  The  king  is  responsible  to  God  for  the  righteous  conduct  of  every 
citizen. 

*Matth.,  i,  1  ff.;  Luke,  iii,  23  ff.. 


70  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZABETH 

characterize  the  songs  as  referring  to  Yahwe's  Anointed, 
his  actually  reigning  vice-gerent  on  earth.  But  the  Phar- 
isees would  naturally  interpret  these  psalms  as  productions 
of  the  great  king  in  the  past.  The  question  would  then 
arise,  Did  he  speak  of  himself  or  of  another  ?  In  most  cases 
the  answer  could  not  be  doubtful.  He  spoke  of  a  Messiah 
who  was  to  come. 

Nor  were  there  lacking  passages  in  the  prophetic  rolls 
that  seemed  to  describe  this  future  Messiah.  Zechariah's 
Zerubbabel  never  sat  upon  the  throne  of  his  father  David ; 
the  prophet  therefore  must  have  had  another  descendant  of 
David  in  mind  when  he  spoke  of  "the  Shoot."  If  this 
obvious  case  of  a  frustrated  national  hope  connected  with 
a  prince  of  the  old  dynasty,  so  common  in  the  beginning  of 
the  reign  of  Darius  Hystaspis,1  could  be  pressed  into  serv- 
ice, it  is  no  wonder  that  utterances  of  a  similar  origin  and 
tenor  that  ultimately  found  their  home  in  the  great  pro- 
phetic rolls  lent  themselves  to  the  same  use.  A  poem  like 
Isa.  ix,  1-6,  celebrating  the  birth  of  a  child  destined  for  the 
throne  of  David,  at  a  time  when  the  people,  living  in  a  land 
of  darkness,  are  under  an  oppressor's  yoke  and  forced  to 
bear  his  burdens,  and  the  native  kingdom  needs  to  be  set  up 
and  made  strong,  could  no  longer  be  seen  against  its  natural 
background  in  the  exile,  since  it  had  secured  a  place  among 
the  oracles  of  Isaiah.  It  was  supposed  to  refer  either  to 
Hezekiah  or  the  Messiah ;  and  as  the  name  that  describes  the 
new-born  king  in  spe  as  "a  counselor  of  wonders,  a  god  of  a 
warrior,  a  father  of  a  multitude2  and  a  prosperous  prince ' ' 
did  not  seem  to  harmonize  with  the  history  of  Hezekiah,  the 
preference  was  given  to  the  Messiah.  It  was  readily  seen 
that  in  Isa.  xi,  1-8,  the  fall  of  the  dynasty  is  presupposed ; 
the  tree  is  down,  the  roots  are  left  under  ground.  But  this 
only  showed  that  "the  shoot  from  the  stock  of  Jesse"  did 
not  belong  to  Isaiah's  own  time.  He  was  a  prophet,  and 
could  look  from  any  given  point  in  the  future  into  a  still 

1  Cf.  Ed.  Meyer,  Geschichte  des  Alterthums,  1884,  i,  p.  613  ff.,  Die 
Entstehung  des  Judenthums,  1896,  p.  82  ff. 

2  Bead  eddh. 


THE  JEWISH  MESSIAH  71 

more  distant  future.  Wherever  a  hope  was  expressed  of  a 
change  in  the  fortunes  of  Israel,  of  better  things  to  come, 
straightway  it  was  imagined  that  the  author  thought  of  the 
Messiah  and  his  reign.  Thus  the  Messiah  was  given  a 
place  among  eschatological  conceptions  that  had  grown  up 
without  any  reference  to  him. 

Out  of  the  needs  of  a  distressful  time  and  the  eager  search 
in  the  Scriptures  for  the  solace  of  divine  promises,  the  idea 
of  the  Messiah  as  an  eschatological  magnitude  seems  to  have 
been  born.  It  was  the  culminating  point  where  several 
independent  tendencies  in  the  life  of  Israel  met.  There 
had  been  a  tendency  to  attach  much  importance  to  the 
anointment  of  rulers.  From  Saul  to  Zedekiah,  from  Joshua, 
son  of  Jehozadak,  to  Jason  or  Menelaus,  from  Jonathan 
to  Aristobulus  II,  the  rulers  of  the  state,  whether  kings, 
high-priests,  or  priest-kings,  had  been  consecrated  with  oil. 
Originally  unction  was  an  application  of  sacrificial  fat.1 
The  pouring  of  oil  upon  the  sacred  stone,  in  which  the 
numen  dwelt,2  was  a  sacrifice.  At  Medina  a  pre-Islamic 
worshiper  washed  and  anointed  his  idol.3  The  king  was  a 
holy  being  to  whom  this  offering  was  made.  He  was  like 
the  Elohim  knowing  good  and  evil.  With  the  anointment  a 
spirit  had  entered  him.4  He  was  sacrosanct;  his  body 
must  not  be  touched.5  He  was  gradually  removed  from 
the  gaze  of  the  people,  and  seen  only  by  his  officials.6  The 
high-priest  was  the  head  of  the  state  in  post-exilic  times. 
He  was  Yahwe  's  Anointed,  a  1 1  son  of  oil, '  '7  having  access 
to  the  celestial  court.8  In  the  Hasmonaean  age,  the  priest- 
king  was  regarded  as  Yahwe 's  Messiah,  his  "son,"  a 

I  Cf .  W.  Robertson  Smith,  Religion  of  the  Semites,  1894,  p.  384. 
a  Gen.,  xxviii,  13 ;  xxxv,  14. 

8  Ibn  Hisham  quoted  by  W.  Robertson  Smith,  1.  c.,  p.  233. 
4 1  Sam.,  xvi,  13.     Cf .  Weinel,  Mashach  und  seine  Derivate,  1898,  p. 
55  ff. 

I 1  Sam.,  xxiv,  10. 

6 II  Kings,  xix,  15. 
1  Zech.,  iv,  14. 
•Zech.,  iii,  7. 


72  THE  PROPHET  OF  NAZAEETH 

"god,"  sitting  on  his  throne.1  It  is  easy  to  surmise 
whither  this  tendency  alone  would  have  led.  Had  the 
dream  of  Daniel  been  realized,  and  the  dominion  over  the 
nations  been  given  to  the  saints  of  the  Maccabaean  period. 
the  king  of  Israel  would  have  been  worshiped  as  a  god, 
and  Jerusalem  rather  than  Rome  would  have  become  the 
seat  of  the  imperial  cult. 

There  was  also  a  tendency  to  repose  an  extraordinary 
faith  in  the  dynasty  founded  by  David.  The  reason  for 
this  was  of  course  its  remarkable  longevity.  A  duration  of 
four  hundred  and  fifty  years  would  have  been  a  noteworthy 
achievement  of  a  royal  family  in  any  age  or  nation.  In 
view  of  the  trying  historical  circumstances  and  the  quick 
succession  of  dynasties  in  many  of  the  surrounding  nations, 
it  must  have  appeared  quite  wonderful.  It  is  not  strange, 
therefore,  that  even  when  Judah  was  finally  threatened 
with  destruction  by  the  Chaldaeans  a  writer  should  have 
expressed  the  confidence  that  the  house  of  David  would 
continue  to  reign  forever.2  Nor  is  it  a  cause  of  astonish- 
ment that,  as  long  as  princes  of  this  family  lived  and  even 
received  signal  honors  at  the  hands  of  Chaldaean  and  Per- 
sian kings,  as  was  the  case  with  Jehoiachin,  Sheshbazzar 
and  Zerubbabel,  the  hope  of  national  independence  should 
connect  itself  with  these  shoots  from  the  old  stock.  The 
gradual  disappearance  of  prominent  members  of  this  fam- 
ily no  doubt  gave  room  for  independent  aspirations.  San- 
ballat  may  have  been  right3  in  declaring  that  prophets  in 
Jerusalem  had  announced  as  the  coming  king  of  Israel 
Nehemiah,4  the  governor,  ca.  385-373  B.  C.5  In  the  next 

1  Pss.,  ii,  xlv,  Iviii,  Ixxii,  ex. 

2 II  Sam.,  vii,  12,  14.  Vs.  13  is  an  interpolation.  Cf .  Wellhausen, 
Die  Composition  des  Hexateuchs  und  der  historischen  Bucher  des 
Alien  Testaments,  1889,  p.  257. 

•Neh.,vi,7. 

4  Cf .  Cheyne,  Jewish  Religious  Life  after  the  Exile,  1898,  p.  46  ff., 
Schmidt,  Nehemiah  and  his  Work  in  the  Biblical  World,  1899,  p.  338. 

6  For  the  date  of  Nehemiah  in  the  reign  of  Artaxerxes  II.  Mnemon, 
cf.  Marquart,  Fundamente  israelitischer  und  jiidischer  Geschichte, 


THE  JEWISH  MESSIAH  73 

century  Simon  became  prince  as  well  as  high-priest,  and 
Aristobulus  I  king,  without  belonging  to  the  Davidic  fam- 
ily. But  the  strength  of  the  legitimist  feeling  may  be 
seen  both  in  the  fiction  by  which  the  actual  occupant  of 
the  throne  was  designated  as  David's  descendant,  and  in 
the  indignant  protest  of  the  Pharisees  against  this  fiction. 
This  loyalty  to  the  legitimate  line,  with  the  increasing  dif- 
ficulty of  finding  a  leader  who  should  also  be  a  real  descend- 
ant of  David,  necessarily  tended  to  remove  into  the  future 
the  Messianic  king  and  to  enhance  the  scope  of  his  work. 
Of  even  greater  importance  was  the  general  tendency  to 
look  beyond  present  conditions  for  better  things  or  for 
worse.  This  had  always  been  strong  in  Israel.  To  the 
mass  of  the  people  in  earlier  times  the  "day  of  Yahwe" 
probably  meant  the  day  of  God-given  victory  and  pros- 
perity. The  majority  of  prophets  no  doubt  shared  the 
same  view.  There  were  more  Hananiahs  than  Jeremiahs. 
A  few  of  Yahwe's  spokesmen,  however,  looking  into  the 
future,  could  see  nothing  but  darkness.  They  were  sooth- 
sayers, as  were  their  colleagues.  It  is  a  strange  misappre- 
hension of  their  character  that  seeks  to  disguise  this  fact. 
Their  eyes  were  constantly  turned  toward  the  future. 
They  watched  for  the  footsteps  of  their  God;  they  looked 
for  the  coming  of  the  day  of  Yahwe.  But  the  approach  of 
this  day  filled  them  with  terror ;  the  signs  of  the  times  indi- 
cated to  them  that  he  was  coming  to  sit  in  judgment  on  his 
people.  Why  must  he  come  to  his  people  with  chastise- 
ment? Because  he  loved  and  would  save  his  own.  For 
this  reason,  too,  they  must  wield  the  scourge,  laying  bare 
the  social  iniquity  for  which  no  sacrificial  cult  could  atone. 
Jeremiah  recognized  no  true  prophets  except  the  prophets 
of  doom.1  Such  collections  of  oracles  by  Amos  and  Hosea, 
Isaiah  and  Micah  as  were  known  at  the  time  contained  as 
yet  no  glowing  descriptions  of  future  happiness  with  which 
Hananiah  might  have  confronted  his  critic.  Men  like  Han- 

1896,  p.   31  ff.;    Torrey,   The  Composition  and  Historical   Value  of 
Ezra-Nehemiah,  1898,  p.  8,  49;  Schmidt,  1.  c.,  p.  334  ff. 
1 XXVIII,  8. 


74  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZABETH 

aniah,  who  proclaimed  good  tidings  to  the  people,  and  intro- 
duced their  oracles  with  a  "Thus  saith  Yahwe,"  were 
unquestionably  quite  sincere,  and  derived  their  information 
from  the  same  source,  the  inspiration  of  Yahwe.1  But  their 
diagnosis  of  the  disease  and  their  appreciation  of  the  his- 
toric situation  were  more  defective.  History  justified  the 
gloomier  forebodings.  The  pre-exilic  prophets  had  proved 
to  be  genuine  sooth-sayers.  To  this  fact  they  owed  the  high 
regard  in  which  later  generations  held  them,2  and  we  owe 
the  preservation  of  their  oracles. 

After  the  deportation  of  parts  of  the  people  in  597,  586 
and  581  B.  C.,  the  prophecy  of  coming  evil  naturally  ceased 
among  the  exiles,  and  the  old,  popular  hope  of  the  day  of 
Yahwe  revived.  While  some  attached  much  value  to  the 
re-establishment  of  the  dynasty,3  others  put  the  emphasis 
entirely  on  the  overthrow  of  the  present  world-power,  the 
return  of  the  exiles,  and  the  vengeance  upon  and  authority 
over  certain  nations,  and  the  prosperity  to  come.  Perhaps 
the  most  influential  writer  of  the  period,  the  remarkable 
genius  to  whom  we  owe  Isa.  xl-xlviii,  did  not  concern  him- 
self about  the  Davidic  family  when  Yahwe  had  plainly 
raised  up  a  king  (an  anointed  one)  to  accomplish  his  pur- 
pose, to  destroy  Babylon,  send  the  exiles  home,  build  the 
temple,  and  allow  Jacob  to  lord  it  over  his  enemies.  The 
same  spirit  prevails  in  the  Songs  of  Zion  in  Isa.  xlix-lv. 
Even  when  the  future  came  to  be  seen  in  more  somber 
colors  by  the  authors  of  "Malachi,"  Isa.  Ivi  ff.  and  Joel, 
eschatology  developed  without  including  any  Messianic 
idea.  The  translated  Elijah  was  indeed  to  come  back  from 
heaven  before  Yahwe  could  return  to  his  temple,  but  for  the 
Messiah  there  was  as  yet  no  place.  The  coming  of  Elijah 

1On  the  artificial  distinction  between  false  prophets  and  true,  cf. 
J.  C.  Matthes,  De  pseudoprophetismo  Hebraeorum,  Leiden,  1859; 
Kuenen,  De  profeten  en  de  profetie  onder  Israel,  Leiden,  1875,  and 
the  criticism  of  certain  positions  in  this  work  by  Pierson,  Een  studie 
over  de  geschriften  van  Israels  profeten,  Amsterdam,  1877. 

*Zech.,  i,  6. 

8  ISs.,  xvii,  22  ff.;  Isa.,  ix.,  1-6,  xi,  1-6;  Amos,  ix,  11  ff.;  Hag.,  ii,  23; 
Zech.,  iv,  6  ff . ;  Jer.,  xxx,  8. 


THE  JEWISH  MESSIAH  75 

is  also  referred  to  in  Ecclus.  xlviii,  10,  without  any  sugges- 
tion in  regard  to  the  Messiah.1 

This  is  also  true  of  the  apocalyptic  literature  that  flour- 
ished in  the  Hasmonaean  period.  In  Daniel,  God  estab- 
lishes his  kingdom  on  earth  without  a  Messiah.  In  heaven 
the  Most  High  judges,  the  beast  is  slain,  and  the  angel  rep- 
resenting Israel  receives  the  kingdom  of  the  world;  this 
angel  (Michael)  fights  with  the  angel  of  Greece,  and  stands 
up  in  the  end  victoriously  for  his  people.  On  earth 
Antiochus  Epiphanes  meets  his  death,  the  Jews  obtain  do- 
minion over  the  nations,  and  some  martyrs  and  their  perse- 
cutors rise  from  among  the  dead  to  long  lives  of  glory  and 
of  shame.  The  celestial  patterns  have  grown  richer.  But 
there  is  among  them  no  Messiah.  Next  to  the  Ancient  of 
Days,  who  alone  exercises  judgment,  Michael,  the  dragon- 
killer,  the  judaized  Marduk,  figures  prominently.  In  the 
terrestrial  copy,  the  drama  of  history,  the  succession  of 
world  powers,  with  their  allotted  periods  of  time,  and  the 
participation  of  saints  raised  from  the  dead  are  new  fea- 
tures. But  no  king  has  anything  to  do  with  the  founda- 
tion of  the  new  empire  any  more  than  with  the  resurrec- 
tion of  the  dead. 

It  is  natural  that  the  disposition  to  map  out  the  future 
should  have  been  encouraged  by  the  stirring  events  of  the 
Maccabaean  insurrection,  and  also  that  there  should  have 
been  no  reason  for  putting  into  the  future  a  Messianic 
king  while  Yahwe's  anointed  was  actually  sitting  on  the 
throne  of  David  and  engaged  in  restoring  the  kingdom 
and  conquering  the  world.  The  atmosphere  of  the  Psalter 
is  saturated  with  the  desire  for  divine  judgment  upon  the 

1  A  comparison  of  the  Hebrew  text  with  the  Greek  and,  in  this  place, 
especially  the  Ethiopic  version,  suggests  that  the  last  lines  should  be 
read: 

"Blessed  is  he  who  saw  thee  (Elijah)  and  died  for  love  of  thee; 
As  for  us  we  shall  surely  live  through  thee. ' ' 

The  passage  is  apparently  an  interpolation  in  "The  Praise  of 
Famous  Men,"  a  work  written  by  Simeon,  the  son  of  Jesus,  son  of 
Eleazar  ben  Sira,  as  the  colophon  in  the  Hebrew  indicates.  See 
Schmidt,  Ecclesiasticus,  1903,  p.  174. 


76  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZARETH 

heathen  nations,  and  breathes  a  pathetic  confidence  in  the 
dynasty  occupying  the  Davidic  throne.1  Even  among 
the  Jews  of  Egypt  this  mood  prevailed.  Around  the  tem- 
ple at  Leontopolis  built  by  Onias  III  several  colonies 
seemed  to  have  settled,  in  which  the  language  of  Canaan 
continued  to  be  spoken.  An  older  prophecy  against 
Egypt  was  here  given  an  appendix  written  in  apocalyptic 
style.2  The  present  condition  is  predicted,  and  the  future 
is  also  prophesied.  It  is  evident  that  the  recognition  of 
Jonathan  by  Alexander  Balas  on  the  occasion  of  his  mar- 
riage to  Cleopatra  150  B.  C.  inspired  the  author's  hopes. 
Jonathan  is  probably  the  deliverer  of  vs.  20 ;  the  smiting 
and  healing  of  Egypt  and  the  triple  alliance  of  Syria, 
Egypt  and  Israel  belong  to  the  future.  The  Alexandrian 
Jews  also  looked  eagerly  into  the  future.  Some  fruits  of 
their  apocalyptic  speculation  they  put  into  the  spacious 
lap  of  the  Sibyl.  In  the  reign  of  Ptolemy  VII  Physcon 
(145-117)  the  author  of  the  larger  part  of  Book  III  of  the 
Sibylline  Oracles  prophesied  to  the  nations  what  had 
already  happened  to  them,  that  they  might  believe  the 
more  implicitly  in  the  disclosures  of  things  still  to  come. 
Having  turned  from  Hellas,  where  Corinth  has  been  des- 
troyed in  146  B.  C.,  to  the  temple  of  the  great  God  and  his 
people,  he  describes  how  God  sends  from  the  sun  a  king 
who  puts  an  end  to  the  bad  war,  killing  some  and  mak- 
ing sure  treaties  with  others,  following  not  his  own  coun- 
sel but  the  decrees  of  the  great  God,  and  in  whose  reign 
the  people  is  prosperous  and  the  earth  fruitful.3  After  this 
the  kings  of  the  nations  assemble  against  Jerusalem,  God 
himself  destroys  them  and  finally  establishes  his  kingdom 
for  all  time  over  all  men.4  The  king  ' '  from  the  sun, ' '  like 

JThis  eschatological  mood  has  been  well  described  by  Stade,  Die 
Messianische  Hoffnung  im  Psalter  in  ATcademische  Eeden  und 
Abhandlungen,  1899,  p.  39  ff.  The  political  background  of  the 
Psalter  is  most  satisfactorily  depicted  by  Duhm,  Die  Psalmen,  1899. 

'  Isa.,  xix,  16-25. 

8  Oracula  Sibyllina,  III,  652-660,  ed.  Ezach. 

4  III,  660  ff . 


THE  JEWISH  MESSIAH  77 

the  king  "from  heaven,"1  is  an  Eastern  monarch  from  the 
standpoint  of  the  Sibyl  whose  home  is  at  Erythrae  oppo- 
site Chios.  The  former  is  no  doubt  Simon,  as  the  latter 
is  Cyrus.  That  the  Messiah  cannot  be  meant2  is  clear 
from  the  fact  that  this  king  completely  disappears  when 
the  author's  real  eschatology  begins  and  plays  no  part 
whatever  in  the  last  things,  while  the  description  admir- 
ably suits  the  great  contemporaneous  leader  of  the  chosen 
people. 

The  supply  of  prophecy  was  quite  equal  to  the  demand. 
When  Simon  was  appointed  hereditary  high-priest  and  ruler 
of  the  people,  this  action  was  made  subject  to  prophetic 
ratification.8  A  psalmist  in  Jerusalem4  and  a  Sibyllist  in 
Alexandria  soon  furnished  the  necessary  oracle.  A  highly 
advanced  eschatology  without  the  slightest  suggestion  of 
a  Messiah  meets  us  in  Isa.  xxiv-xxvii.  In  the  original 
apocalypse,  written  ca.  128  B.  C.,5  the  judgment  of  the 
world  begins  with  the  incarceration  of  the  great  powers 
in  heaven  and  on  earth,  whereupon  Yahwe  appears  in 
Zion,  and  offers  a  festive  meal  to  all  nations.  The  Jews 
are  then  hidden  while  the  judgment  goes  on,  and  when 
the  great  trumpet  blows  the  scattered  Israelites  come  to- 

1  III,  286. 

2  Already  in  the  edition  of  Koch  (Opsopaeus),  Paris,  1599,  a  note, 
possibly  from  the  hand  of  Chateillon,  in  the  margin  opposite  III,  286, 
indicates  that  the  king  "from  heaven7'  is  "Christus, "  though  the 
next  lines  are  seen  to  refer  to  * '  the  restoration  of  the  temple  after  the 
Babylonish    captivity."     The   Messianic   interpretation    is   generally 
abandoned   in  this  place,   except  possibly  by   Hilgenfeld,   Jiidische 
ApoTcalyptik,  1857,  p.  64.     It  is  the  great  merit  of  Hilgenfeld  to  have 
determined  the  date  of  these  apocalyptic  sketches.     But  Vernes  has 
convincingly  shown  that  Cyrus  is  referred  to  in  III,  286;  Histoire  des 
idees  Messianiques,  1874,  p.  59  f.,  and  Colani,  Jesus  Christ  et  les 
Croyances  Messianiques   de   son  temps,   1864,   p.   25  ff.,   as  well   as 
Vernes,  I.  c.,  p.  64  ff.,  has  proved  that  III,  660,  probably  refers  to 
Simon. 

3 1  Macc.y  xiv,  46. 
*P*.,  ex. 

6  The  situation  was  first  recognized  by  Duhm,  Das  Buch  Jesaia, 
1892.     Cf.  also  Marti,  Das  Buch  Jesaia,  1900. 


78  THE  PKOPHET  OF  NAZAKETH 

gether  to  Zion.  An  interpolation  describes  the  resurrec- 
tion of  faithful  Yahwe-worshipers  through  the  dew  of 
healing.1 

Somewhat  later  in  the  reign  of  John  Hyrcanus  the  earli- 
est part  of  the  Book  of  Enoch  seems  to  have  appeared. 
In  Eth.  En.  i-xxxvi  a  description  is  given  of  the  judgment 
of  angels  and  men.  The  angels  who  sinned  with  women,2 
are  imprisoned  and  finally  punished;  wicked  men  either 
remain  forever  in  Sheol  to  be  punished  there,  or  are  trans- 
ferred to  Gehenna,  where  their  spirits  are  slain;  the 
righteous  rise  to  eat  of  the  tree  of  life  in  the  new  Jerusa- 
lem, where  they  will  beget  many  children,  have  plenty  of 
food,  and  grow  old  in  peace.  Neither  in  connection  with 
the  judgment  nor  in  the  new  kingdom  is  there  any  Mes- 
siah. Between  Daniel  and  this  book  the  tremendous  step 
has  been  taken  of  making  Sheol  a  place  of  conscious  exist- 
ence, where  some  are  punished  for  ever,  and  consequently 
need  not  be  raised  to  life  again  to  get  their  deserts.  Eth. 
En.  Ixxxiii-xc,  written  ca.  106  B.  C.,  presents  an  outline 
of  Biblical  history  in  which  the  antediluvians  figure  as 
cattle,  the  nations  living  after  the  flood  as  various  kinds 
of  beasts,  and  the  Israelites  as  sheep.  The  characters 
are  very  plainly  portrayed,  however.  One  of  the  sheep, 
Elijah,  is  carried  on  high  to  be  with  Enoch.3  Seventy 
shepherds,  the  angels  of  the  nations,  originally  their  gods, 
are  in  charge  of  the  sheep  during  the  period  of  foreign  domi- 
nation. This  comes  to  an  end  when  upon  the  lambs  (i.  e.j 
chasids)  horns  begin  to  appear  (the  sons  of  Mattathias). 
Particularly  on  one  of  these  sheep  (no  doubt,  John  Hyr- 
canus) a  great  horn  grows  out  that  cannot  be  broken  by 
the  ravens  (the  Syrians  under  Antiochus  VII).  Michael, 
as  scribe  in  the  role  of  Nabu,  ascertains  that  the  last 
twelve  shepherds  have  destroyed  more  than  their  prede- 
cessors, and  a  sword  is  given  to  the  sheep.  A  throne  is 
erected  in  Palestine,  the  final  judgment  is  held,  the  new 

1  So  the  Greek  version  seems  to  have  read. 

2  Gen.,  vi,  1  ff. 
3LXXXIX,  52. 


THE  JEWISH  MESSIAH  79 

Jerusalem  is  set  up,  martyrs  are  raised,  all  are  invited  and 
Jerusalem  is  filled  with  white  sheep.  The  picture  is  ap- 
parently completed,  when  the  figure  of  a  white  bull 
appears  that  is  feared  by  all  beasts  and,  when  all  other 
animals  have  become  white  bulls  also,  is  changed  into  a 
buffalo  with  black  horns.1  It  is  generally  understood 
that  this  bull  is  the  Messiah  and  also  admitted  that  he  has 
nothing  to  do  here.  His  appearance  when  all  is  done  is 
accounted  for  as  "a  literary  reminiscence,"2  or  a  piece  of 
"the  official  traditional  dogmatic  repertoire  of  the  syna- 
gogue."3 Vss.  37  and  38 — except  "the  lord  of  the  sheep 
rejoiced  over  them" — are  probably  an  addition  by  a  later 
hand.  In  Eth.  En.  xci-civ,  probably  written  ca.  70  B.  C., 
the  description  of  the  eighth  and  following  weeks  (xci,  12- 
19),  before  the  first  week  (xciii,  3  ff )  is  manifestly  due 
to  a  displacement.  But  this  is  itself  most  naturally  ex- 
plained, if  it  originally  was  a  marginal  annotation,  as  it 
has  the  appearance  of  being.  If  this  conjecture  is  correct, 
the  eschatology  would  not  differ  essentially  from  that 
of  sections  already  considered.  There  is  no  Messiah  in 
this  booklet. 

It  will  be  seen  that  a  system  of  eschatology  had  devel- 
oped before  the  Roman  period,  including  such  features  as 
the  judgment  of  angels  and  of  men,  and  their  punishment 
in  hell,  the  great  banquet  in  Zion,  the  resurrection  of  at 
least  some  of  the  dead,  and  the  establishment  of  the  king- 
dom of  heaven,  but  as  yet  no  personal  Messiah.  The  rea- 
son is  obvious.  It  is  Yahwe  himself  who  judges  the 
world,  prepares  his  meal  for  all  nations,  raises  the  dead 
and  reigns  on  the  earth. 

Veneration  for  the  anointed  ruler  of  the  state,  loyalty 
to  the  old  dynasty,  and  speculation  about  the  world's 
future,  prepared  the  way  for  the  Messiah.  Roman  op- 
pression caused  a  fusion  of  these  elements.  An  anointed 
king  of  Israel  was  needed.  But  he  must  be  a  genuine  son 

*XC,  37,  38. 

1  Charles,  The  Boole  of  Enoch,  1893,  p.  258. 
•Beer,  in  Kautzsch,  Pseudepigraphen,  1900,  p.  298. 


80  THE  PKOPHET  OF  NAZAKETH 

of  David.  As  no  claimant  to  the  throne  of  the  legitimate 
line  was  known,  he  necessarily  belonged  to  the  future. 
But  even  as  an  eschatological  magnitude  his  functions 
remained  for  a  long  time  purely  political,  and  the  Mes- 
sianic hope  was  cherished  only  by  some  fractions  of  the 
people.  This  fact  renders  it  difficult  to  believe  that  the 
Messiah  conception  developed  under  the  influence  of  Per- 
sian thought.  The  Mazdayasnian  Saoshyas  had  no  polit- 
ical character.  He  was  expected  to  raise  the  dead  and  to 
renew  the  world.1 

The  Egyptian  Jews  participated,  if  at  all,  to  a  very  lim- 
ited extent  in  the  new  hope.  That  the  translators  of  Isa. 
ix,  5  and  Ps.  ex,  3  (cix,  3  in  the  Greek)  had  the  Messiah 
in  mind,  is  not  certain.  In  rendering  the  first  three  words 
of  the  name  ' l  angel  of  great  counsel, ' '  the  former  followed 
the  common  custom  of  substituting  " angel"  for  "god"; 
in  translating  "from  the  womb  before  the  dawn  I  have 
begotten  thee, ' '  the  latter  slavishly  followed  the  text  word 
for  word.2  It  may  have  been  during  the  second  triumvi- 
rate (before  30  B.  C.),  that  a  Jewish  Sibyllist  predicted 
that  Rome's  conquest  of  Egypt  would  be  succeeded  by  the 
kingdom  of  "the  immortal  God,"  "the  great  king,"  by 
the  coming  of  "the  holy  ruler,"  whose  reign  would  extend 
over  the  whole  earth  and  last  for  all  times.  This  holy 
ruler  is  supposed  by  some  interpreters  to  be  the  Messiah ; 
but  the  context  rather  favors  the  view  that  none  else  is 
intended  than  the  "immortal  God"  and  "great  king."8 

*Yasht,  xix,  92  ff.  Cf.  N.  Soderblom,  La  vie  future  dans  le 
Mazdeisme,  1901. 

2  Whether  "he  is  the  expectation  of  nations ' '  was  the  original  ren- 
dering in  Gen.,  xlix,  10,  may  be  doubted.  In  Num.,  xxiv,  17,  the  Davidic 
house  is  meant.  On  the  change  of  Agag  into  Gog,  cf.  Geiger,  Ur- 
schrift  und  Uebersetzungen  der  Bibel,  1857,  p.  366,  and  also  Schmidt, 
article  "Scythians"  in  Encyclopaedia  Biblica.  The  originality  and 
age  of  either  rendering  are  uncertain. 

*0racula  Sibyllina,  iii,  46-62,  75-92.  It  is  possible,  however,  that 
Otho,  Galba  and  Vitellius  are  meant  rather  than  Antonius,  Octavianus 
and  Lepidus,  that  vss.  53,  54  refer  to  the  eruption  of  Vesuvius  in  79 
A.  D.,  and  that  the  widow  is  not  Cleopatra  but  Eome,  vss.  75  ff.  So 
E.  Preusehen,  Paulus  als  Antichrist  in  Zeitschrift  fur  die  Neutesta- 


THE  JEWISH  MESSIAH  81 

The  Book  of  Wisdom,  written  about  the  beginning  of  our 
era,  contains  no  allusion  to  the  Messiah.  Philo  (ca.  20 
B.  C.-50  A.  D.)  describes  the  return  of  the  Israelites  to 
Palestine  "led  by  a  divine  or  more  than  human  appari- 
tion."1 He  also  declares  that,  if  enemies  should  attack 
the  future  kingdom  of  peace,  they  would  be  scattered, 
since  in  that  case  a  man  would  come,  according  to  the 
promise,  who  would  subdue  the  nations,  God  granting  to 
the  pious  auxiliaries  in  psychic  power  and  bodily 
strength.2  The  "apparition"  is  probably  the  divine 
glory,  the  Shechinah.  Briggs3  may  be  right  in  judging 
from  the  context  in  the  latter  passage  that  Philo  thought 
of  deliverance  through  manly  qualities  rather  than 
through  a  man.  A  second  reference  to  Balaam's  proph- 
ecy* is  not  decisive.  That  he  interpreted  Zech.  vi,  12  as 
an  allusion  to  the  Logos,  which  he  never  identified  with 
the  Messiah,  is  significant.  The  Slavonic  Enoch,  prob- 
ably written  in  Egypt  before  70  A.  D.,5  knows  nothing  of 
a  Messiah. 

Even  in  Palestine  the  Messianic  hope  expressed  in  the 
Psalter  of  Solomon  was  manifestly  far  from  common. 
In  the  circles  whence  the  book  of  Ecclesiastes  proceeded 
(ca.  30  B.  C.)  there  naturally  was  no  sympathy  with  such 

mentliche  Wissenschaft,  vol.  II,  190,  p.  173  ff.  Under  all  circum- 
stances it  is  Simon  Magus  that  is  meant  by  the  Beliar  who  comes 
from  the  Sebastenes.  This  name  for  the  Samaritans  is  not  possible 
before  27  B.  C.,  and  vs.  63  ff.  must  have  been  written  by  a  Christian. 
This  makes  the  context  also  doubtful.  Bousset  has  recently  sug- 
gested a  reflection  of  ' '  pagan-Messianic ' '  hopes  in  III,  47  f .  Die 
Religion  des  Judentums  im  Neutestamentlichen  Zeitalter,  1902,  p.  212. 

1  De  Execrationibus,  ed.  Mangey,  III,  437. 

*De  proemis  et  poems,  II,  421-428  (ed.  Mangey). 

8  The  Messiah  of  the  Gospels,  1894,  p.  38. 

*  In  Vita  Mosis,  II,  126. 

0  So  Charles,  The  Boole  of  the  Secrets  of  Enoch,  1896,  p.  26.  The 
only  real  reason  adduced  is  the  references  to  sacrifices  in  lix,  2.  But 
they  are  so  slight  and  so  easily  explained  by  the  author's  guise  that 
there  can  be  no  real  assurance  as  to  this  date. 


THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZARETH 


illusions.  But  neither  the  Book  of  Jubilees1  nor  the  As- 
sumption of  Moses  i-vi;2  written  in  the  beginning  of  our 
era,  mentions  the  Messiah,  though  there  were  natural 
occasions  for  doing  so.  The  original  Testaments  of  the 
Twelve  Patriarchs  may  have  received  their  first  Jewish 
interpolations  in  the  same  period.  There  is  no  reference 
to  the  Messiah  in  them.  But  Michael  is  described  as  "the 
mediator  between  God  and  man.*'3  In  an  apocalyptic 
fragment  of  Jewish  origin  incorporated  in  the  book  of 
Kevelation,4  and  dating,  as  Wellhausen  has  seen,5  from  the 
siege  of  Jerusalem,  a  woman  in  heaven,  clothed  with  sun, 
moon  and  stars,  brings  forth  a  man  child  that  is  immedi- 
ately carried  to  God,  and  the  dragon  is  cast  by  Michael 
from  heaven  to  earth,  where  he  pursues  the  woman,  who 
escapes,  and  her  kin  for  three  years  and  a  half.  Ulti- 
mately this  figure  of  a  queen  of  heaven  with  her  celestial 
child  no  doubt  belongs  to  the  realm  of  mythology  as  much 
as  Michael  and  the  dragon.6  The  earthly  events  that  the 

1"And  one  of  thy  sons"  in  Jubilees,  xxxi,  18,  is  clearly  an  inter- 
polation. It  may  refer  to  David,  as  Charles  thinks,  Doctrine  of  a 
Future  Life,  1899,  p.  246. 

2  The  Assumption  of  Moses  consists  of  an  original  part  i-vi,  and 
an  appended  passage  that  probably  dates  from  a  much  later  period 
when  the  rebellion  of  Simon  bar  Kozeba  had  already  been  crushed. 
The  description  of  fearful  persecutions  does  not  give  the  impression 
of  being  a  work  of  imagination  based  on  the  sufferings  under  Antio- 
chus  Epiphanes.  The  crucifixion  of  Jews  is  a  peculiarity  of  the  later 
persecution.  The  Taxon,  ix,  may  be  Jehudah  ben  Baba,  who  fled 
with  his  seven  disciples.  The  second  cruel  punishment  at  least  pre- 
supposes the  destruction  in  70  A.  D.  Probably  that  and  the  one  in 
135  A.  D.  are  meant. 

8  Dan.,  vi. 

4  XI,  1,  2;  xii. 

5  Slcizzen  und  Vorarbeiten,  VI,  1899,  p.  225  ff . 

•Ninib,  Ishara's  son,  is  the  rising  sun  and  also  the  planet  Saturn; 
Jensen,  Die  Kosmologie  der  Babylonier,  1890,  pp.  136  ff.,  242,  457  ff. 
Yaldabaoth,  "Bau's  son,"  the  god  of  the  Jews,  is  also  Saturn. 
Origen  Contra  Celsum,  vi,  31,  Epiphanius,  Adv.  Haer.,  xxvi,  10.  Bau 
seems  to  be  the  counterpart  of  Gula,  Ninib 's  consort  (Jensen);  but 
Bau  hay  apparently  also  taken  Ishara's  place.  Was  either  of  these 
goddesses  ever  identified  with  Ishtarl  Epiphanius  relates  (ed.  Dindorf, 


THE  JEWISH  MESSIAH  83 

author  desires  to  symbolize  are  in  the  main  clear.  Deliv- 
erance will  come  after  the  short  but  trying  time  prophe- 
sied by  Daniel.  Rage  as  it  may,  Rome  will  not  be  able  to 
destroy  the  remnant  that  has  escaped  its  clutches,  nor  to 
touch  the  sanctuary  itself  in  Jerusalem,  nor  to  prevent  the 
coming  of  the  Messiah.  This  Messiah  has  been  born  in 
the  Jewish  community,  but  has  already  as  a  child  been 
translated.  A  similar  idea  appears  in  the  Babylonian 
Talmud,1  where  the  Messiah  is  a  deceased  descendant  of 
David,  who  rises  from  the  dead  to  accomplish  the  deliv- 
erance of  Israel.2  Both  of  these  notions  were  due  to  the 
conviction  that  God  would  provide  a  genuine  son  of  David. 
A  translated  hero  would  naturally  return  on  the  clouds  of 
heaven.  Thus  in  the  Apocalypse  of  Baruch,  written  after 
the  fall  of  Jerusalem,  the  Messiah  is  " revealed/'3  and 
"returns  in  glory"4  to  rule  until  the  world  of  corruption 
is  at  an  end,5  sparing  some  and  putting  others  to  death.8 

The  Fourth  Book  of  Ezra,  written  in  97  A.  D.,  exhibits 
similar  Christological  conceptions.  In  vii,  28  ff.,  God  de- 
clares that  his  son,  the  Messiah,  will  be  revealed  during 
four  hundred  years,  and  then  die  together  with  all  men, 
whereupon  the  present  aeon  will  close  and  the  new  age 

ii,  483)  that  on  the  day  of  the  winter  solstice  the  virgin  Chaamu  and 
her  son  Dusares  were  praised,  and  that  the  same  was  done  in  Elusa 
on  that  night.  In  Elusa  the  goddess  Chalazath,  or  Venus,  had  her 
temple.  The  celestial  virgin  is  probably  Ishtar — Venus,  and  the 
solar  deity  (Ninib,  Yaldabaoth,  Dusares,),  is  her  son.  Cf.  Baethgen, 
Beitrdge  zur  Semitschen  Religionsgeschichte,  1888,  p.  107.  On 
Yaldabaoth,  see  Lipsius,  TJeber  die  Ophitischen  Systeme  in  Zeitschrift 
fur  Wissenschaftliche  Theologie,  1863,  460;  Baudissin,  Studien  zur 
Semitischen  Eeligions-geschiclite,  1876,  p.  231  ff.;  Dietrich,  Abraxas, 
1891,  pp.  6,  46. 

1  Sanhedrin,  98  b. 

2  Cf .   the   discriminating   observations   of   Louis   Ginzberg,   Monat- 
schrift  fur  Geschichte  und   Wissenschaft  des  Judenthums,   1898,  p. 
541  ff. 

8  XXIX,  3;  xxxix,  7. 

4  XXX,  1. 

6  XL,  3. 

6  LXXII,  2-6, 


84  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZAKETH 

begin  after  seven  days  of  silence  with  the  resurrection  of 
the  dead  and  the  appearance  of  the  Most  High  on  the 
judgment-seat.  The  woman,1  who  brings  forth  a  child, 
loses  him  as  she  is  about  to  give  him  a  wife,  and  flees  into 
the  wilderness,  is  none  else  than  the  woman  of  Rev.  xii; 
the  presumption  is  that  originally  the  son  was  also  the 
Messiah,  though  the  present  text  of  x,  44  ff.  explains  him 
to  be  the  city  itself,  or  the  temple.  The  lion  that  rebukes 
the  eagle  is  declared  to  be  the  Christ  who  has  been  pre- 
served for  the  end  from  the  seed  of  David,  and  will  appear 
to  annihilate  the  wicked  enemy  and  to  give  the  remnant 
of  the  people  joy  until  the  judgment  comes.2  Finally,  the 
man-like,  or  angelic,  being  that  rises  from  the  sea,  and 
flies  with  the  clouds  of  heaven  destroying  an  army  with 
the  fire  that  issues  from  his  mouth,  is  explained  to  be  the 
son  of  God,  through  whom  creation  will  be  redeemed  and 
a  new  order  established.3  It  is  emphatically  stated  that 
God  is  not  to  judge  his  creation  through  any  one.4  While 
this  apocalypse  in  other  respects  shows  the  influence  of 
early  Christian  thought,  it  still  protests  against  ascribing 
judgment  to  the  Messiah. 

This  step  had  apparently  been  taken,  not  indeed  in  the 
apocalypse  ascribed  to  John,  but  in  two  other  works  of  a 
similar  character  that  probably  appeared,  like  it,  in  the 
reign  of  Domitian,  viz. :  Ethiopic  Enoch  xxxvii-lxxi  and 
The  Wisdom  of  God.  The  former  designates  itself  as  the 
second  vision  of  Enoch.  It  is  composed  of  tnree  hortatory 
discourses  and  an  appendix.  This  work  has  not  come 
down  to  us  in  its  original  form.  We  possess  only  an  Ethi- 
opic translation  of  a  Greek  translation,  or  of  the  prob- 
ably Aramaic  original.  How  accurately  these  translators 
did  their  work,  and  what  changes  may  have  been  intro- 
duced by  copyists,  cannot  be  determined.  It  would  be 
a  miracle,  if  a  piece  of  writing  that  offered  such  peculiar 

1 IX,  43  ff . 

2  XII,  31  ff. 
8  XIII,  1  ff. 


THE  JEWISH  MESSIAH 


temptations  should  have  escaped  the  common  fate  of 
books.  Yet  it  is  not  likely  that  the  universally  admitted 
longer  interpolations  were  made  by  the  Greek  translator 
or  subsequent  to  his  time.  It  has  long  been  recognized 
that  En.  xxxix,  1,  2a,  liv,  7,  Iv,  2,  Ix,  Ixv,  1-lxix,  25  are  ex- 
tracts from  a  lost  Apocalypse  of  Noah.  Charles  is  probably 
right  in  assuming  that  xli,  3-8,  xliii,  and  xliv,  have  come 
from  the  same  source.  He  also  rightly  regards  xlii,  1,  Ixx 
and  Ixxi  as  later  additions.  But  what  remains  is  not  the 
work  of  one  hand.  The  original  vision  probably  con- 
tained xxxvii,  xxxviii,  xxxix,  3-13,  xl,  xli,  1,  2,  xlv,  1,  2,  5, 
6,  xlvii,  xlviii,  8-10,  liii,  1-5,  liv,  1-6,  Iv,  3,  Ivi,  Ivii,  Iviii  (Ixiii, 
Ixiv).  In  this  work  God  alone  is  the  judge,  and  there  is 
no  Messiah.  This  book  seems  to  have  been  annotated  and 
expanded  by  a  writer  who  looked  forward  to  the  revela- 
tion of  a  chosen  instrument,  not  merely  for  the  punish- 
ment of  the  nations,  but  for  the  judgment  of  the  world,  a 
man  destined  to  sit  upon  a  glorious  throne  .to  judge  angels 
and  men  (xlv,  3,  4,  xlvi,  li,  liii,  6,  Iv,  4,  Ixi,  8,  9).  There 
can  be  little  doubt  that  this  writer  had  in  mind  the  Mes- 
siah, and  that  he  understood  the  being  like  a  man  in 
Dan.  vii,  13,  to  be  the  Messiah.  Yet  the  manuscript,  as 
he  left  it,  cannot  yet  have  contained  any  unmistakable 
Messianic  term,  since  the  author  of  ch.  Ixxi  evidently 
regarded  "the  man  who  has  righteousness"  of  xlvi,  3,  as 
Enoch.  Israel's  celestial  representative  in  Dan.  vii,  13, 
had  not  been  mentioned  by  name.  Originally  he  was  no 
doubt  Michael.  But  there  was  room  for  conjecture:  he 
might  be  the  Messiah,  or  a  translated  hero  like  Enoch. 
The  conception  of  the  Messiah  as  judge  of  the  world  may 
be  due  to  Christian  influence,  but  the  author  of  these 
interpolations  is  not  likely  to  have  been  a  disciple  of 
Jesus.  In  that  case  he  would  probably  have  referred  to 
the  sufferings  of  the  Messiah.  A  Christian  hand  may 
have  cautiously  retouched  the  picture  in  chs.  xlviii,  Ixii 
and  Ixix,  26  ff. 

In  Luke  xi,  40,  a  work  called  "The  Wisdom  of  God" 
is  quoted.     In  this  book  the  esoteric  wisdom  of  the  apoca- 


THE  PBOPHET  OF  NAZARETH 


lyptic  seer  is  personified  and  predicts  the  future.  Strauss1 
has  convincingly  shown  that  not  only  the  prediction  of 
vengeance  for  the  blood  of  martyred  prophets  from  Abel 
to  Zechariah  the  son  of  Barachiah,  slain  during  the  siege 
of  Jerusalem  (Jos.,  Bellum  jud.  iv,  335,  343),  but  also  the 
woe  upon  Jerusalem,  so  often  visited  in  vain  by  the  divine 
wisdom,  that  immediately  follows  in  Matth.  xxiii,  37  fi% 
was  drawn  from  this  source.  It  is  altogether  probable 
that  the  apocalyptic  fragment  that  follows  in  Matth.  xxiv, 
4-36  (Mk.  xiii,  5-32;  Luke  xxi,  8-36),  and  the  ground- 
work of  xxv,  31  ff.  were  likewise  extracts  from  the  same 
work.  Strauss  assumed  a  Christian  authorship  for  the 
" Wisdom  of  God."  But  the  statement,  "Your  house  is 
left  unto  you  desolate,"  does  not  suggest  that  it  must 
remain  so;  it  only  mentions  what  to  the  author  is  mani- 
festly a  very  sad  fact  of  experience.  There  is  nothing  in 
the  description  of  the  last  days  of  Jerusalem,  the  flight, 
or  the  coming  of  the  man  on  the  cloud,  that  is  distinctly 
Christian.  The  revelation  of  the  future  given  by  Jesus  to 
John  on  Patmos  may  have  inspired  some  Christian  to  use 
this  material  for  another  Apocalypse  of  Jesus.  The  fur- 
ther development  of  certain  ideas  in  En.  xxxvii-lxxi  and 
the  Wisdom  of  God  by  the  disciples  of  Jesus  naturally 
caused  a  reaction  against  them  in  rabbinic  circles. 

Josephus  was  unquestionably  familiar  with  the  Mes- 
sianic idea.  It  is  possible,  however,  that  under  the  influ- 
ence of  his  Essene  ( ?)  teacher,  Banus,  and  as  a  result  of 
the  hopeless  struggle,  he  had  learned  to  look  forward  to 
a  quiet  possession  of  the  land  by  Israel  and  a  spread  of 
Judaism  throughout  the  world,2  even  though  it  were 
under  Roman  suzerainty,3  rather  than  to  a  personal  Mes- 
siah. Yet  he  was  far  from  a  consistent  quietist,  and  may 
in  his  heart  have  cherished  hopes  with  which  he  did  not 
care  to  make  Vespasian  acquainted.  It  is  a  pity  that  he 

1  Jesu  WeTieruf  uber  Jerusalem  in  Zeitschrift  fur  Wissenschaftliche 
Theologie,  1863,  p.  84. 

2  Ant.,  iv,  125,  ed.  Mese. 
•De  ~beVo  jud.,  vi,  313. 


THE  JEWISH  MESSIAH  87 

should  have  remembered  that  he  was  nothing  but  a  his- 
torian just  as  he  was  on  the  point  of  explaining  what  the 
"  little   stone "   in   Daniel1    signified.2     In    describing   the 
insurrections  led  by  Judas,  son  of  Ezekias,3  (ca.  4  B.  C.), 
Judas  the  Galilaean,4  (ca.  7  A.  D.),  the  Samaritan  in  Tira- 
thana5  (ca.  37  A.  D.),  Theudas6  (ca.  46  A.  D.),  the  Egyp- 
tian (ca.  58  A.  D.)  and  others,  Josephus  may  have  inten- 
tionally refrained  from  characterizing  them  as  Messianic 
movements.7     It  is  quite  possible  that  one  or  another  of 
these  "sorcerers"  and  "prophets,"  as  he  called  them,  may 
have  been  greeted  as  the  Messiah,  and  regarded  himself 
as  such.     Acts  v,  36,  suggests  that  this  was  the  case  of 
Theudas.     Hausrath8   sought   to   identify   the   Samaritan 
of   Ant.   xviii,   85   ff.   with   Simon  Magus.     The   historic 
character  of  Simon  Magus  is  very  doubtful;  neither  II 
Mace,  ii,  5  ff.  nor  Ap.  Bar.  vi,  renders  it  clear  that  even  the 
Jews  expected  the  Messiah,  rather  than  some  prophet  like 
Jeremiah,  to  point  out  the  place  of  the  hidden  vessels ;  the 
late  story  in  John  iv,  in  which  the  profound  philosophy  of 
the  Fourth  Evangelist  is  so  beautifully  symbolized,  fur- 
nishes no  evidence  of  Messianic  beliefs  among  the  Samari- 
tans of  the  first  century;  and  the  age  of  the  Ta'eb  concep- 
tion cannot  be  determined  with  any  certainty.     Yet  it  is 
not  impossible  that  the  hosts  that  gathered  in  Tirathana 
looked  upon  their  leader  as  the  Ta'eb,  or  "Revenant," 
come  back  from  heaven,  to  which  he  had  been  translated, 
to  establish  a  kingdom  greater  than  Gog's.   Judas,   of 
Gamala,  seems  to  have  been  the  founder  of  the  party  of 
the  Zealots.    His  sons  and  a  grandson  continued  his  oppo- 

1  On  the  high  value  he  placed  upon  the  book  of  Daniel,  cf.  Schmidt, 
article  Bible  Canon,  Critical  View  in  the  Jewish  Encyclopaedia  and 
article  Bible  in  the  New  International  Encyclopaedia. 

*Ant.,x,  210. 

•De  bello  jud.,  ii,  56. 

*De  bello  jud.,  ii,  118. 

•Ant.,  xviii,  85  ff. 

•Ant.,  xx,  97  f. 

1 Ant.,  xx,  160. 

•  Neutestamentliche  Zeitgeschichte,  1879,  I,  pp.  382-386. 


88  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZAEETH 

sition  to  Rome.  But  there  is  no  intimation  that  he  was 
considered  as  the  Messiah,  nor  indeed  that  such  a  being 
had  a  place  in  his  "  philosophy. ' '  On  the  other  hand,  it 
is  entirely  probable  that  during  the  siege  of  Jerusalem 
one  or  another  of  the  leaders  felt  himself  called  to  the 
Messiahship  and  fired  the  enthusiasm  of  his  followers  with 
Messianic  expectations.1 

The  best  authenticated  instance  of  a  Jewish  Messiah 
is  that  of  Simon  bar  Kozeba.2  Of  him  alone  can  it  be  said 
that  he  was  not  only  recognized  by  his  people  as  the  Mes- 
siah at  a  time  when  the  Messianic  idea  was  fully  developed, 
and  regarded  himself  as  such,  but  also  succeeded  in 
achieving  temporarily  the  redemption  of  Jerusalem  and 
thus  in  part  realizing  his  ideal.  Simon's  home  may  have 
been  in  Modein,3  and  he  was  undoubtedly  inspired  by  the 
story  of  the  Hasmonaean  insurrection.  When  circum- 
cision had  been  prohibited  and  an  attempt  made  to  build 
a  temple  to  Jupiter  in  Jerusalem,  now  called  Aelia  Capi- 
tolina,  this  heroic  soul,  like  Mattathias  of  old,  felt  a  divine 
call  to  lead  his  people  against  the  oppressor.  When  suc- 
cess crowned  his  efforts,  and  even  the  great  Akiba  greeted 
him  as  Bar  Kokeba,  "son  of  the  star"  (alluding  to  Num. 
xxiv,  17),  and  as  "king  Messiah, "4  when  Eleazar  the 
priest  stood  by  his  side,  and  the  people  recognized  him  as 
" Israel's  prince,"5  how  could  he  doubt  that  God  had 
chosen  him  for  the  deliverance  of  Zion?  He  was  indeed 
no  descendant  of  David.  But  the  title  "Son  of  David" 
could  be  taken  in  a  general  sense  as  denoting  a  successor 
of  David,  a  king  sitting  upon  David 's  throne,  as  well  as  in 

1  Matth.,  xxiv,  24  f . 

2  Bousset  thinks  that  his  home  was  in  Kokaba,  referring  to  Julius 
Africanus,  as  quoted  in  Eusebius  Hist.  EccL,  I,  7,  14  (Die  Religion 
des  Judentums,  1903,  p.  211).     But  this  is  probably  a  misunderstand- 
ing of  the  name  given  him  by  E.  Akiba  (Taanith,  68d). 

8  His  uncle  Eleazar  lived  in  Modein,  cf .  W.  Bacher,  Die  Agada  der 
Tannaiten,  1883,  p.  194  ff.  Modein  is  probably  the  modern  El 
Medyeh,  near  Lydda-El  Ludd. 

4  Taanith,  68d. 

5  Cf .  the  coins  in  Madden,  Coins  of  the  Jews,  1881,  pp.  239,  244. 


THE  JEWISH  MESSIAH  89 

the  narrower  sense  of  a  lineal  descendant  always  affected 
by  the  opposition.1  Concerning  the  preexistence  of  the 
Messiah  opinions  differed.  Some  held  that  all  souls  had 
existed  before  their  birth,  yet  no  one  could  remember 
such  a  previous  existence.  The  reaction  against  thoughts 
peculiar  to  the  followers  of  Jesus  had  probably  removed 
some  of  the  transcendental  aspects  of  the  Messianic  ideal. 
The  Messiah  expected  even  by  an  Akiba  was  just  the  kind 
of  man  that  Simon  was.  When  the  rebellion  was  crushed 
by  Hadrian  in  135  A.  D.,  the  fearful  disenchantment  ex- 
pressed itself  in  curses  upon  Simon 's  head.  He  was  sneer- 
ingly  referred  to  as  the  "son  of  a  lie."  Had  he  succeeded, 
he  would  have  remained  "son  of  the  star"  forever.  Syna- 
gogue and  church  vied  with  each  other  in  calling  him  a  false 
Messiah,  an  impostor,  a  liar.  On  both  sides  curious  prej- 
udices prevailed.2  In  one  circle,  the  establishment  of  a 
Jewish  kingdom  of  righteousness  by  the  sword  of  a 
mighty  hero  whose  picture  was  found  on  many  a  page  of 
the  Bible  was  ardently  desired,  but  patriotism  was  appar- 
ently no  longer  regarded  as  a  virtue  when  it  failed  to 
put  an  end  to  oppression.  In  another  circle,  Simon  was 
expected  to  measure  himself  by  the  ideal  of  a  lamb  will- 
ingly led  to  slaughter,  a  non-resistant  teacher  of  universal 
love,  an  ideal  that  the  immediate  disciples  of  Jesus  never 
dreamed  of  associating  with  the  Messiahship  until  after 
the  crucifixion  of  the  Master.  Simon  miscalculated 

1  Cf .  Ps.  Sol.,  xvii,  4,  5,  21.     Jochanan  ben  Torta  in  Taanith,  68d ; 
Marie,  xii,  35-37  (Matth.  xxii,  41-46;  Luke,  xx,  41-44).     The  words 
put  upon  the  lips  of  Jesus  in  the  last  of  these  passages  show  both 
that  the  opponents  of  the  claims  made  for  Jesus  by  his  disciples  in- 
sisted upon  lineal  descent  and  that  the  defenders  did  not  feel  ham- 
pered by  the  fact  that  Jesus  was  not  a  descendant  of  David  and  were 
at  no  loss  to  find  Scriptural  support  for  their  view.     No  aspirant  to 
the  Messiahship  is  likely  to  have  been  seriously  inconvenienced  by  his 
pedigree.     It  was  a  handy  weapon,  however,  of  the  opposition,  and  the 
genealogists  in  Matth.,  i,  and  Luke,  iii,  sought  to  wrest  it  out  of  the 
hands  of  the  enemy. 

2  Cf .  the  wise  words  of  Hausrath,  Neutestamentliche  Zeitgeschichte , 
1879,  I,  p.  203  f . 


90          THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZAEETH 

Hadrian's  strength,  as  Kossuth  did  the  combined  forces 
of  Hapsburgs  and  Romanoffs.  But  there  is  something 
sublime  in  the  bold  defiance  of  the  divine  Caesar  on  the 
throne  of  the  world  by  the  hero  of  a  petty  oppressed  peo- 
ple. The  Messianic  ideal  was  a  political  one,  but  should 
not  for  this  cause  be  condemned. 

The  hope  of  deliverance  could  not  perish.  It  voiced 
itself  in  the  Shemoneh  Esreh.1  What  was  needed  was  a 
genuine  descendant  of  David  (14,  15),  and  a  restoration 
of  the  cult  (17).  This  expectation  also  found  expression 
in  a  psalm  interpolated  in  the  Hebrew  text  of  the  Wisdom 
of  Jesus,  the  Son  of  Sirach,  between  51:12  and  13.  Be- 
side the  budding  of  the  horn  of  the  house  of  David  the 
choice  of  the  sons  of  Zadok  is  mentioned.  A  legitimate 
high  priesthood  was  not  less  important  than  a  legitimate 
royalty  of  the  Davidic  line.  Eleazar  is  mentioned  on  the 
coins  of  "  Jerusalem  Delivered "  by  the  side  of  Simon,  as  in 
earlier  days  Joshua  by  the  side  of  Zerubbabel.  But 
neither  Eleazar  nor  Simon  bar  Kozeba  could  quite  satisfy 
the  sticklers  for  legitimacy — when  their  regime  had  come 
to  an  unfortunate  end.2  In  the  reign  of  Antoninus  Pius 
(137-161  A.  D.)  Trypho  told  Justin  Martyr3  that  all  Jews 
believed  that  the  Messiah  would  be  a  man  born  of  men, 
and  that  he  would  be  anointed  by  Elijah.  Celsus  (ca.  178 
A.  D.)  puts  his  arguments  against  Christianity  on  the  lips 
of  a  Jew.  How  far  the  Jew  represents  Celsus,  rather  than 
Celsus  the  Jew,  is  doubtful.  But  in  the  main  the  philoso- 
pher probably  represents  fairly  well  the  average  Jewish 
opinion  of  the  day.  This  is  also  shown  by  the  Targums. 
These  Aramaic  paraphrases  by  different  interpreters  no 
doubt  give  a  fair  idea  of  the  opinions  prevailing  from  the 

1  The  Palestinian  recension  of  these  ' '  Eighteen  Prayers ' '  found  in 
a  geniza  in  Cairo  was  published  by  Schechter  in  Jewish  Quarterly  Ee- 
view,  1898,  pp.  654-659.     Together  with  the  Babylonian  recensien  it 
has  been  reprinted  by  Dalman,  Die  Worte  Jesu,  Leipzig,  1898,  p. 
299  ff .,  where  also  a  number  of  other  prayers  and  hymns  referring  to 
the  Messiah  are  given. 

2  See  Schmidt,  Ecclesiasticus,  1903,  pp.  xxvi,  xxvii,  176  ff. 
*  Dial.  c.  Tryph.,  xlix. 


THE  JEWISH  MESSIAH  91 

first  to  the  seventh  century  of  our  era.  Unfortunately, 
it  is  impossible  to  date  with  accuracy  the  different  tar- 
gums.  It  is  significant,  however,  that  the  unquestionably 
very  late  Targum  Jerushalmi  contains  a  much  larger 
number  of  Messianic  interpretations  than  Targum  On- 
kelos,1  among  them  the  interesting  reference  to  the  Mes- 
siah, son  of  Ephraim  (to  Ex.  xl,  11).  Other  sources  des- 
ignate him  as  Messiah,  son  of  Joseph,  and  indicate  that  he 
will  be  revealed  in  Galilee,  gather  the  ten  tribes,  fight 
against  Gog  and  Magog,  and  die  by  their  sword  for  the 
sin  of  Jeroboam,2  or  that  he  will  be  put  to  death  and  after- 
wards be  seen  by  his  murderers,  in  accordance  with  Zech. 
xii,  10.3  The  origin  of  this  conception  of  two  Messiahs  is 
very  obscure.  Levy4  thinks  that,  after  the  death  of 
Simon  bar  Kozeba,  the  people  were  told  that  he  had 
indeed  been  the  Messiah,  but  only  an  auxiliary  Messiah, 
the  real  Son  of  David  being  in  the  future.  The  sugges- 
tion of  Merx5  that  the  idea  is  intelligible  only  as  a  compro- 
mise of  two  different  Messiah-conceptions  is  more  likely 
to  be  corect.  With  Bertholdt,  he  thinks  of  the  Samaritan 
Ta'eb,  and  assumes  that  he  was  the  survival  of  a  Messiah 
earlier  than  the  Judaean  Son  of  David.  But  of  such  a 
Messiah  there  is  no  evidence,  and  the  Son  of  Joseph  who 
is  to  appear  in  Galilee  has  retained  no  feature  connecting 
him  with  the  Shechemite  community.  Possibly  the  com- 
promise was  with  the  Ebionites,  a  concession  made  to  the 
followers  of  Jesus  before  the  final  separation.  "Your 
Messiah,  Joseph's  son,  may  indeed  appear  in  Galilee,  as 

1 17  in  Targum  Jerushalmi  to  2  in  Targum  Orikelos. 

aCf.  Targum  to  Canticles,  iv,  5,  and  the  rabbinic  literature  quoted 
by  L.  Bertholdt,  De  Christologia  Judaeorum  Jesu  Apostolorumque 
aetate,  Erlangen,  1811,  p.  77  ff. 

1  In  the  Babylonian  Talmud,  Sukka,  52a,  this  passage  is  referred  to 
Messiah  ben  Joseph  by  E.  Dosa,  who  lived  in  the  second  century, 
A.D. 

*  Neuhebraisches  und  Chaldaisches  Worterbuch  uber  die  Talmudim 
und  Midraschim,  III,  271. 

*Ein  Samaritanisches  Fragment  uber  den  Ta'eb  oder  Messias,  Lei- 
den, 1893,  p.  20. 


92  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZAEETH 

you  expect,  but  only  to  perish  again  because  of  idolatry 
to  give  place  to  the  real  Messiah,  David's  son."  Prophe- 
cies, like  Isa.  viii,  23,  may  have  forced  this  concession. 
Joseph  and  Ephraim  being  interchangeable,  the  complex- 
ion of  the  whole  idea  would  readily  change,  and  the  forma- 
tive Christian  influence  would  be  forgotten.  Targum 
Jonathan  to  Zech.  iv,  7,  teaches  that  the  name  of  the  Mes- 
siah was  mentioned  from  of  old.  Whether  this  implies 
a  real  preexistence  from  eternity,  is  doubtful.  This  Tar- 
gum  also  refers  a  part  of  the  description  of  the  Servant  of 
Yahwe  in  Isa,  liii  to  the  Messiah,  but  the  sufferings  are 
not  ascribed  to  him. 

It  was  a  victorious  warrior  and  a  just  ruler,  a  king 
restoring  independence  to  Israel  and  giving  it  dominion 
over  the  world,  that  the  Jews  of  the  Roman  period  prayed 
for  and  expected.  The  prevailing  thought  did  not  con- 
nect with  him  either  the  creation  of  the  world  or  the  res- 
urrection of  the  dead  and  the  final  judgment,  still  less  a 
redemption  of  mankind  through  vicarious  suffering. 
Even  the  thought  of  making  the  conqueror  of  the  nations, 
the  theocratic  king,  Yahwe 's  son  and  vice-gerent  on  earth, 
also  judge  of  the  world  was  scarcely  conceived  under 
Christian  influence1  before  it  was  finally  rejected.  A 
rigid  monotheism  rendered  it  impossible  for  the  Jewish 
Messiah  to  become  more  than  a  man.  The  New  Testa- 
ment reveals  substantially  the  same  beliefs  concerning  the 
Messiah  both  on  the  parts  of  the  opponents  and  the  de- 
fenders of  the  Messiahship  of  Jesus.  But  in  addition  to 
these,  grafted  upon  this  stock,  there  appear  ideas 
utterly  foreign  to  the  Jewish  thought  of  the  Messiah.  Such 
are  the  conceptions  of  a  suffering  and  atoning  Saviour,  a 
Lamb  of  God  taking  away  the  sin  of  the  world,  a  celestial 
and  archetypal  man,  medium  of  creation,  redemption, 
resurrection  and  final  judgment,  a  Son  of  God  in  the 
Greek  metaphysical  sense,  a  Philonian  Logos  tabernacling 
among  men.  Out  of  the  union  of  all  these  elements  the 

1  Interpolations  in  En.,  xxxvii-lxxi,  and  possibly  Wisdom  of  God. 


THE  JEWISH  MESSIAH  93 

Christ  of  the  ecumenic  creeds  evolved.  He  had  little 
more  than  the  name  in  common  with  the  Jewish  Messiah. 
Neither  was  ever  dreamed  of  by  the  men  whose  thoughts 
are  revealed  in  the  Old  Testament.  Both  present  ideals 
of  humanity  that  contain  elements  of  permanent  ethical 
value.  The  Jewish  Messiah  did  not  live  in  vain  in  the 
hopes  of  those  who  looked  for  Israel's  consolation;  nor 
did  he  die  in  vain  where  in  the  life  of  a  scattered  and  per- 
secuted people  he  left  as  an  heir  the  dream  of  an  united 
human  race,1  and  among  earth's  most  progressive  nations 
a  desire  for  the  leadership  of  Israel's  greatest  prophet. 

1  It  falls  outside  the  scope  of  the  present  study  to  sketch  the  devel- 
opment of  the  Messianic  idea  in  Judaism  from  the  reign  of  Hadrian 
to  the  present  time.  But  it  may  be  remarked  that  Jewish  and  Chris- 
tian scholars  ought  to  be  able  by  this  time  to  break  the  spell  of  a 
name  and  to  accord  a  fair  judgment  to  those  political  leaders,  social 
reformers,  mystics  and  prophets  who  from  Simon  bar  Kozeba  to 
Sabatai  Zewi  have  assumed  or  received  from  others  the  title  of  the 
Messiah.  Cf.  Hamburger,  article  Messiasse  in  Beal-EncyJclopaedie 
des  Judentums,  and  Schmidt,  article  Messiah  in  the  New  International 
Encyclopaedia.  These  Messianic  movements  should  also  be  more 
closely  examined  in  the  light  of  similar  phenomena  in  the  East 
which  is  so  prodigal  with  its  Saoshyants,  Imams,  Mahdis,  prophets 
and  revealers. 


CHAPTER  V 
THE  SON  OF  MAN 

As  long  as  the  Gospels  were  read  in  the  light  of  the  creeds, 
the  term  "son  of  man"  was  naturally  understood  as  indi- 
cating the  human  nature  assumed  in  the  incarnation  by  the 
second  person  of  the  Trinity.1  "When  the  Biblical  books 
began  to  be  studied  with  a  view  to  ascertaining  the  thought 
of  the  writers,  rather  than  with  a  more  or  less  frankly 
avowed  purpose  of  discovering  proof -texts  for  the  support 
of  an  already  formulated  system  of  doctrine,  a  number  of 
perplexing  questions  arose  touching  the  origin,  use  and 
significance  of  the  phrase.  Did  Jesus  invent  it  as  a  designa- 
tion of  himself  or  find  it  as  a  Messianic  title  ?  In  the  former 
case,  did  he  use  it  to  intimate  that  he  was  the  man  par  excel- 
lence, the  ideal  man,  or  that  he  was  a  mere  man,  nothing  but 
a  human  being  ?  Did  he  coin  it  as  an  expression  of  what  he 
thought  the  Messiah  ought  to  be,  or  as  a  means  of  distin- 
guishing himself  .from  the  Messiah  currently  expected  ?  In 
the  latter  case,  was  its  source  in  the  book  of  Daniel,  or  in 
some  other  place?  Was  it  a  commonly  understood  Mes- 
sianic title,  or  was  it  known  only  to  a  few  as  a  name  of  the 
Messiah  ?  In  either  case,  was  there  a  special  significance  in 
the  word  "son"  or  did  "son  of  man"  mean  only  "man"? 

1  Cf .  for  instance  one  of  the  best  Mediaeval  interpreters,  Nicolas  de 
Lyra,  Biblia  Sacra,  Venice,  1588,  Vol.  ii,  p.  43,  to  Matth.,  xii,  8. 
This  passage  is  understood  to  affirm  that  blasphemy  against  Christ's 
humanity  is  not  as  unpardonable  as  that  against  his  divinity.  In 
Matth.,  xvi,  13,  Christ  is  interpreted  as  confessing  concerning  himself 
the  humble  fact  of  his  humanity,  while  his  disciples  understood  his 
deity.  A  curious  gloss  to  "men"  in  Matth.,  xvi,  13,  is  "homines 
sunt  qui  de  filio  hominis  loquuntur,  Dei  enim  qui  deitatem  intelli- 
gunt."  For  a  convenient  summary  of  patristic  and  Mediaeval  opin- 
ion see  Appel,  Die  Selbsfbezeichnung  Jesu,  1896. 

94 


THE  SON  OF  MAN  95 


Might  the  term  have  different  meanings  in  different  con- 
nections? Should  the  discussion  be  confined  to  the  Greek 
form,  or  would  it  be  justifiable  to  look  for  the  actual 
Aramaic  words  used  by  Jesus,  and  to  inquire  as  to  the  man- 
ner in  which  these  would  naturally  be  employed  and  under- 
stood ? 

The  first  of  these  questions  to  receive  serious  considera- 
tion seems  to  have  been  the  one  mentioned  last,  though  its 
importance  for  the  solution  of  the  entire  problem  has  not 
been  recognized  until  recently.  Gilbert  Genebrard,1  com- 
menting on  Matth.  xii,  32,  explained  "son  of  man"  as 
"man"  and  with  great  propriety  referred  to  Eli's  words  in 
I  Sam.  ii,  25  as  expressing  the  same  sentiment.  Sins 
against  men  may  be  pardoned,  but  not  sins  against  God. 
Independently  Hugo  Grotius2  reached  the  same  conclusion. 
He  also  perceived  that  in  Matth.  xii,  8  the  conclusion  evi- 
dently must  be, ' '  Therefore  man  is  lord  even  of  the  sabbath. ' ' 
Pointing  to  Mark  ii,  28  as  giving  the  more  original  connec- 
tion, he  showed  that  the  argument  would  have  no  cogency,  if 
the  "son  of  man"  were  interpreted  as  the  Messiah,  and 
called  attention  to  the  fact  that  at  the  time  Jesus  had 
neither  declared  himself  to  be  the  Messiah,  nor  been  willing 
to  have  his  disciples  proclaim  him  as  such.  The  natural  ex- 
planation he  found  in  the  Hebrew  phrase  6  en  Adam  which 
simply  means  "man."  Grotius  refrained,  however,  from 
further  application  of  the  principle.  A  third  Orientalist, 
Johann  Adrian  Bolten,3  following  the  hint  given  by  Grotius. 
carefully  examined  the  use  of  this  term  in  Hebrew,  Syriac, 
Arabic,  Samaritan  and  Ethiopic.  His  conclusion  was  that 
"son"  everywhere  in  this  connection  was  only  a  means  of 
designating  the  individual  of  the  species,  and  that  in  Matth. 
ix,  6,  xii,  8,  xii,  32  the  term  should  be  translated  "man," 


*De  S.  Trinitate  libri  III,  Paris,  1569,  quoted  by  Arnold  Meyer, 
Jesu  Muttersprache,  1895,  p.  142. 

a  In  Critici  Sacri,  Vol.  VI,  1698,  cols.  445,  446. 

*Der  Bericht  des  Matthaeus  von  Jesu  dem  Messia,  Altona,  1792, 
quoted  by  A.  Meyer,  I.  c.  It  is  the  merit  of  Arnold  Meyer  to  have 
brought  to  light  the  testimony  of  these  three  Orientalists. 


96          THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZABETH 

while  in  other  passages  it  should  be  interpreted  in  the  light 
of  the  Aramaic  bar  nasha  as  an  indefinite  pronoun,  "one," 
"some  one."  H.  E.  G.  Paulus,1  as  Theodore  Beza2  before 
him,  explained  "the  man"  to  mean  "this  man  who  stands 
before  you,"  a  substitute  for  the  personal  pronoun  "I,"  like 
the  Oriental  "thy  servant/'  "thy  handmaiden."  O.  F. 
Fritzsche3  followed  Paulus,  but  added  the  important  sugges- 
tion that  a  number  of  passages  containing  the  term  belonged 
to  a  later  time,  when  it  had  taken  on  a  Messianic  significance. 
Kuinoel4  accepted  the  interpretation  of  Matth.  xii,  8  given 
by  Grotius  and  that  of  Matth.  x,  23  given  by  Beza  and 
Bolten. 

A  theory  assuming  that  Jesus  habitually  used  an  indefi- 
nite pronoun,  or  a  phrase  like  "the  man,"  accompanied  by 
a  gesture  indicating  himself,  instead  of  the  simple  first  per- 
sonal pronoun,  was  too  artificial  to  command  respect.  The 
philological  explanation  was  an  apparent  failure,  and  in  the 
general  reaction  against  rationalismus  vulgaris  the  achieve- 
ments of  these  earlier  scholars  were  completely  forgotten. 
Much  work  had  to  be  done  in  literary  and  historical  criti- 
cism before  the  argument  from  philology  could  again  be 
profitably  presented. 

It  was  only  a  more  modern  form  that  Herder5  gave  to 
the  old  idea,  that  the  term  was  intended  to  teach  the  human 
nature  of  Christ  as  distinct  from  his  divine  nature,  by  ex- 
plaining it  as  a  designation  of  the  ideal  humanity  of  Jesus. 
Through  Schleiermacher6  and  Neander7  this  view  gained  a 
wide  recognition.  It  was  defended  by  C.  H.  Weisse,8  H. 

1  Theologisch-Tcritischer  Commentar  uber  das  Neue  Testament,  1800, 
1812. 

2  Quoted  by  Holtzmann  in  Zeitschrift  fur  Wissenschaftliche  Theo- 
logie,  1865,  p.  217. 

8  Commentatio  in  EvangeUum  Matthaei,  p.  320. 

4  Commentarius  in  libros  Novi  Testamenti,  1823,  I,  320. 

5  Christliche  Schriften,  II,  1796,  v,  4. 

8  Einleitung  in 's  Neue  Testament,  p.  479  f . 

7  Das  Leben  Jesu,  1837,  p.  129  ff. 

8  Die  Evangelische  Geschichte,  1838,  I,  p.  325. 


THE  SON  OF  MAN  97 


Holtzmann1  and  W.  Beyschlag2  from  different  standpoints. 
Weisse  thought  that  Jesus  used  it  to  intimate  that  his  was  a 
higher  type  of  humanity,  hence  it  was  to  his  hearers  a  riddle. 
Holtzmann  held  that  Jesus  did  not  find  the  phrase  as  a  Mes- 
sianic title  but  formed  it  as  an  esoteric  designation  for  him- 
self from  Dan.  vii,  13,  to  indicate  that  he  was  the  bearer  of 
all  human  dignity  and  human  rights.  Beyschlag  found  al- 
ready in  the  passage  in  Daniel  the  ideal  man,  the  pre- 
existent,  archetypal,  heavenly  man,  and  in  Jesus  at  once 
the  Messiah  and  this  ideal  man  appearing  on  earth. 

Against  this  conception  of  the  term  as  claiming  an  em- 
phatically high  position,  Christian  Ferdinand  Baur3  set  a 
diametrically  different  estimate.  Having  shown  that  the 
passages  where  the  term  occurs  in  the  Fourth  Gospel  cannot 
throw  any  light  on  its  original  meaning,  he  examined  the 
Synoptics  with  the  result  that  he  could  neither  find  anything 
to  suggest  Dan.  vii  as  the  probable  origin,  nor  discover  in  the 
context  anywhere  a  hint  of  ideal  manhood.  On  the  con- 
trary, it  seemed  probable  that  Jesus  invented  this  self-desig- 
nation in  order  at  the  same  time  to  claim  for  himself  a  Mes- 
siahship  without  which  he  could  not  attain  to  a  more  univer- 
sal recognition  and  a  genuine  national  work,  and  to  keep 
aloof  from  the  vulgar  Messianic  idea  associated  with  the  title 
'  l  Son  of  God.  '  '  In  distinction  from  a  Messiah  appearing  in 
power  and  glory,  he  would  be  a  man  deeming  nothing 
foreign  to  him  that  belongs  to  the  lot  of  a  human  being, 
identifying  himself  with  all  human  conditions,  needs  and 
interests  in  genuine  human  sympathy,  and  accepting  all  suf- 
ferings and  sacrifices  connected  with  his  work  in  life.  Co- 
lani4  maintained  that  the  expression  was  unknown  before 


den  N.Tlichen  Ausdruck  "  Menschensohn"  in  Zeitschrift 
fur  Wiss.  Theologie,  1865,  p.  212  ff. 

2  Die  Christologie  des  Neuen  Testaments,  1866,  p.  9  ff. 

•  Zeitschrift  fur  Wiss.  Theologie,  1860,  p.  274  ff  .    In  Neutestament- 
liche  Theologie,  1864,  p.  82,  he  assumes  a  later  Danielle  significance 
for  the  eschatological  discourses  differing  from  the  earlier  and  origi- 
nal. 

*  Jesus  Christ  et  les  Croyances  messianiques  de  ton  temps,  1864,  p. 
74  f  .,  81  f  . 

7 


98  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZAEETH 

Jesus,  because  it  was  he  who  created  it ;  that  by  it  he  desig- 
nated himself  as  a  poor  child  of  Adam,  and  also  as  the  object 
of  a  particular  divine  love ;  that  no  one  saluted  him  as  "son 
of  man/'  because  this  would  have  been  almost  an  insult, 
and  that  it  soon  disappeared,  because  in  the  faith  of  the 
church  the  divinity  had  become  more  important  than  the 
humanity  of  Jesus.  Like  Baur,  Hilgenfeld1  regarded  the 
expression  as  indicating  lowly  external  conditions  and  a 
humble  disposition  as  associated  with  the  Messianic  office, 
while  he  considered  Dan.  vii  to  be  its  source  and  maintained 
its  Messianic  significance  in  all  places. 

Already  W.  Scholten2  and  more  clearly  D.  F.  Strauss3  had 
looked  upon  "the  son  of  man"  as  simply  a  title  of  the  Mes- 
siah drawn  from  Dan.  vii  without  any  intention  of  describ- 
ing by  it  the  character  of  the  Messiah.  Bernhard  Weiss4 
most  consistently  carried  out  this  idea.  Rejecting  both  the 
"emphatically  high"  and  the  "emphatically  low"  concep- 
tion supposed  to  be  implied  in  the  title,  and  refraining  from 
all  analysis  of  the  phrase,  he  contented  himself  with  showing 
that  it  was  everywhere  used  as  an  equivalent  of  the  Messiah. 
Among  those  who  believe  that  Jesus  actually  used  the 
phrase,  this  "synthetic"  view  has  been  adopted  by  Balden- 
sperger.5 

The  majority  of  scholars  continued  to  look  to  the  Greek 
phrase  itself  for  the  solution  of  its  mystery.  But  while  in 
earlier  days  one  fundamental  meaning  was  assumed,  various 

lDie  Evangelien  und  die  gesch.  Gestalt  Jesu  in  Zeitschr.  f.  Wiss. 
Th.,  1863,  p.  327  ff.  Substantially  the  same  view  has  also  been  ex- 
pressed by  Wendt,  Die  Lehre  Jesu,  I,  1888,  p.  23  f.,  and  in  the 
thoughtful  article  of  Holsten,  Zeitschr.  f.  Wiss.  Th.,  1891,  p.  1  ff . 

2  Specimen  hermeneutico-theologicum  de  appellatione  qua  Jesus  se 
Messiam  professus  estr  1809. 

*Leben  Jesu,  1835,  p.  463.  Later  Strauss  changed  his  view  under 
the  influence  of  Baur. 

*Lehrluch  der  UUischen  Theologie  des  N.  T.,  1868,  p.  59  ff. 

5  Das  Selbstbewusstsein  Jesu,2  1892,  p.  169  ff.,  182  ff.  It  is  the  merit 
of  Baldensperger  to  have  seriously  attempted  to  explain  how  Jesus  as 
a  child  of  his  own  age  and  a  true-hearted  man  could  have  regarded 
himself  as  the  Messiah.  The  house  was  well  built,  but  its  foundations 
were  insecure  and  have  given  away  completely. 


THE  SON  OF  MAN  99 


combinations  began  to  be  introduced.  This  was  quite 
natural.  If  the  term  was  at  all  created  by  Jesus,  or  its  con- 
tent modified  by  him,  it  must  reflect  in  some  way  his  Mes- 
sianic consciousness.  Thus  Carl  Wittichen1  maintained 
that  Jesus  changed  the  current  Messianic  conception  of  the 
title  by  infusing  into  it  the  idea  of  a  king  in  a  purely  ethical 
sense,  by  translating  it  from  the  abstract  into  the  concrete, 
by  uniting  with  it  the  notion  of  a  suffering  servant  of  the 
Lord,  and  by  introducing  the  thought  of  a  second  glorious 
presence  on  earth  of  this  ideal  man.  C.  F.  Nosgen2  saw  in 
it,  not  indeed  the  unique  and  perfect  man,  but  a  combination 
of  esoteric  Messiahship  suggested  by  Daniel,  and  a  phase 
of  existence  through  which  the  Messiah  had  to  pass  with  its 
predetermined  humiliation  and  sufferings.  Schneder- 
mann3  combined  Danielic  Messiah,  Ezechielic  prophet, 
ideal  man  and  human  sufferer.  And  R.  H.  Charles4  held 
that  the  true  interpretation  would  be  found  "if  we  start 
with  the  conception  as  found  in  Enoch,  and  trace  its  enlarge- 
ment and  essential  transformation  in  the  usage  of  our  Lord ; 
in  this  transformation  it  is  reconciled  to  and  takes  over  into 
itself  its  apparent  antithesis,  the  conception  of  the  Servant 
of  Jehovah,  while  it  betrays  occasional  reminiscences  of  Dan. 
vii,  the  ultimate  source  of  this  designation." 

While  Colani5  and  Usteri6  most  decidedly  maintained 
that  Jesus  himself  was  the  inventor  of  the  term,  and 
Strauss,7  Hausrath,8,  Vernes9  and  Weizsacker  thought  of 
Ezechiel  as  its  source10,  the  overwhelming  majority  of 

1  Die  Idee  des  Menschen,  1868,  p.  144  ff. 

2  Geschichte  Jesu  Christi,  1891,  p.  155  ff. 

*Jesu  VerTcundigung  und  Lehre  vom  Seiche  Gottes,  II,  1895,  p. 
206  ff. 

4  The  'Book  of  Enoch,  1893,  p.  312  ff. 
6  I.  c. 

'  Theologische  Zeitschrift  aus  der  Schweitz,  1886,  p.  1  ff. 
rl.  c. 

8  Neutestamentliche  Zeitgeschichte,  1879,  III,  p.  980. 

9  Uistoire  des  idees  messianiques,  1874,  p.  187. 

10  This  view  has  recently  been  carried  out  most  consistently  by  G.  L. 
Gary,  The  Synoptic  Gospels,  1900,  p.  360  ff.,  who  rejects  the  idea  that 


100  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZAKETH 

scholars  since  the  time  of  the  Reformation  have  looked  for 
its  origin  to  Dan.  vii.  The  exegesis  of  this  chapter  has 
therefore  naturally  had  much  influence  on  the  view  of  the 
New  Testament  expression.  In  earlier  times  the  "one  like 
a  son  of  man ' '  in  Dan.  vii,  13  was  understood  by  all  to  refer 
to  the  Messiah.  Hitzig1  recognized  the  impossibility  of  this 
interpretation.  He  regarded  the  man-like  being  as  a  sym- 
bol of  Israel,  and  gave  rise  to  the  now  current  view  that  sees 
in  it  a  suggestion  of  the  humane  regime,  the  ideal  kingdom 
of  man,  that  is  to  be  established  when  Israel  comes  into 
power.  Where  this  interpretation  prevailed  it  could  not 
but  affect  the  view-point  from  which  the  whole  question  was 
examined.  If  Daniel  could  body  forth  in  a  symbol  the 
notion  of  an  ideal  society,  why  should  not  Jesus  have  found 
in  it  the  suggestion  of  an  ideal  humanity  to  be  realized  by 
the  individual?  Even  more  pertinent,  however,  would  be 
the  question,  Why  should  he  not  have  used  the  phrase  in  the 
same  manner  to  designate  the  coming  kingdom  of  heaven? 
S.  Hoekstra,2  W.  Briickner3  and  J.  Estlin  Carpenter4  af- 
firmed that  this  was  the  sense  in  which  Jesus  had  used  the 
term.  But  the  symbolic  representation  of  a  "humane 
regime/ '  "ein  Menschheitsideal"  savors  more  of  modern 
sentiments  than  of  the  concrete  conceptions  of  Semitic  an- 
tiquity, and  may  have  been  wrongly  attributed  to  the  ancient 
prophet.  It  is  more  likely  that  in  this  passage,  as  every- 
where else  in  the  book,  the  author  meant  by  a  being  like  a 
man  appearing  in  the  celestial  realms  an  angel,  and  that  the 
particular  angel  in  this  instance  was  none  else  than  Michael, 

Jesus  used  the  term  as  a  Messianic  title  and  maintains  that  "in 
speaking  of  himself  as  'the  Son  of  Man'  he  intended  to  announce 
himself  as  a  prophet  sent  to  warn  his  people  of  the  danger  which 
threatened  them  if  they  did  not  turn  from  their  evil  ways. ' ' 

1  Das  Buch  David,  1850.  Ibn  Ezra  had  already  explained  the  one 
like  a  son  of  man  as  Israel.  Before  Hitzig,  Hofmann  had  also  made 
this  suggestion,  Weissagung  und  Erfullung,  I,  p.  209  f. 

* De  Renaming  tlde  Zoon  des  Menschen,"  1866. 

*  Jesus  "des  Menschen  Sohn"  in  Jahrbiichcr  fur  prot.  Theologie, 
1886,  p.  254  ff. 

*  The  First  Three  Gospels,  1890,  p,  383  ff. 


THE  SON  OF  MAN  101 


the  representative  on  high  of  the  Jewish  nation.1  At  the 
end  of  the  first  century  of  our  era  apocalyptic  writers  clearly 
show  that  they  understand  the  man  on  the  clouds  in  Daniel 's 
vision  as  an  individual,  though  there  is  room  for  difference 
as  to  whether  he  is  the  Messiah2  or  some  such  translated  hero 
as  Enoch.3  That  Jesus  said  "the  man  (of  Daniel's  famous 
vision)  will  eome  on  the  clouds, "  when  he  meant  "the 
kingdom  of  heaven  will  come,"  is  after  all  quite  im- 
probable.4 

Another  way  out  of  the  difficulty  was  indicated  by  the 
general  course  of  literary  criticism.  Through  the  re- 
searches of  Bretschneider,6  Strauss,  Bruno  Bauer  and  Baur 
an  insight  had  been  gained  into  the  character  of  the  Fourth 
Gospel  that  not  only  forbade  its  use  as  a  historic  source  but 
also  revealed  a  late  growth  of  "son  of  man"  passages. 
After  the  priority  of  Mark  had  been  maintained  by  G.  C. 
Storr,6  C.  G.  Wilke7  and  C.  H.  Weisse,8  the  observation  was 
made  by  H.  Holtzmann9  that  in  this  Gospel  Jesus  does  not 
claim  for  himself  the  Messiahship  before  his  visit  to 
Caesarea  Philippi.  This  tended  to  put  into  a  separate  cate- 

1  Cf.  Schmidt,  The  "Son  of  Man"  in  the  Boole  of  Daniel  in  Journal 
of  Bib.  Lit.,  1900,  II,  p.  22  ff.  Nihil  sub  sole  novum.  Three  years 
later  I  discovered  in  Viktor  Kydberg's  Bibelns  Lara  om  Kristus  (5th 
ed.,  1893)  a  passage  I  had  never  seen,  in  which  this  Swedish  savant 
expresses  his  view  that  the  "one  like  a  son  of  man"  is  Michael  and 
Messiah  in  one  person  not  yet  separated.  This  is  not  my  view,  as  I 
do  not  believe  the  Messiah  is  in  any  way  referred  to  in  this  passage. 
But  suum  cuique.  Was  Eydberg  the  first  to  think  of  Michael  in  this 
connection! 

*En.,  xlvi,  2,  3,  4;  xlviii,  2;  Ixii,  7,  9,  14;  Ixiii,  11  j  Ixix,  26,  27,  29; 
Ixx,  1;  IV  Ezra,  xiii,  3  ff . 

*En.,  Ixxi. 

4  The  view,  expressed  by  the  present  writer  in  Journal  of  Bib.  Lit., 
1896,  p.  51,  that  on  one  occasion  Jesus  used  it  in  this  sense  can  no 
longer  be  maintained. 

"Probabilia  de  evangelii  et  epistolarum  Joannis  Apostoli  indole  et 
origine,  1820. 

•  Von  dem  Zweck  der  evangelischen  Geschichte,  1786. 
TZter  Ur evangelist,  1838. 

•  Die  evangelische  Geschichte,  1838. 

•  Die  Synoptischen  Evangelien,  1863,  p,  431  ff. 


102  THE  PROPHET  OF  NAZARETH 

gory  those  passages  in  Mark  that  contained  the  term,  and 
yet  occurred  in  this  Gospel  before  the  episode  at  Caesarea 
Philippi.  If  they  could  not  be  removed  from  their  place,1 
they  would  have  to  be  explained.  But  for  this  necessity,  it 
is  scarcely  conceivable  that  the  theory  should  have  become  so 
popular  that  has  been  maintained  by  Ritschl,2  Holtzmann3 
and  a  great  number  of  scholars,  according  to  which  Jesus 
used  the  term  to  half  conceal  and  half  reveal  his  identity, 
hiding  it,  as  it  were,  from  the  mighty  and  wise  who  looked 
for  a  son  of  David,  while  suggesting  it  to  the  babes  whose 
faith  was  nourished  by  apocalyptic  visions.  The  obvious 
improbability  of  this  conjecture  was  calculated  to  raise  a 
question  concerning  the  reliability  of  the  synoptic  represen- 
tation. The  discovery  of  John's  untrustworthiness  had  led 
scholars  to  lean  all  the  more  heavily  on  Mark,  Matthew  and 
Luke.  It  is  largely  the  merit  of  Bruno  Bauer  and  Volkmar 
to  have  applied  the  same  measure  to  all  the  Gospels,  explain- 
ing each  as  a  didactic  work  written  for  a  definite  purpose, 
and  naturally  reflecting  the  religious  thought  of  the  author 
and  the  circle  of  Christians  where  he  moved.  From  this 
point  of  view  it  readily  occurred  first  to  Bauer4  and  then 
independently  to  Volkmar5  that  the  title  may  have  been  a 
creation  of  Mark  and  that  consequently  Jesus  may  never 
have  used  it  as  a  self-designation.  The  absence  of  the  title6 
in  the  Pauline  literature  and  the  Apocalypse  of  John  gave 
added  strength  to  this  impression.  But  was  really  Mark  the 
originator  of  this  expression  ?  Colani7  had  recognized  that 
Mark  xiii,  5-32  (Matth.  xxiv,  4-36,  Luke  xxi,  8-36)  was  "a 
veritable  apocalypse  lacking  nothing  essential  to  this  species 

xTliis  was  done  by  August  Jacobsen,  TJntersuchungen  uber  die 
Synoptischen  Evangelien,  1883,  p.  57  ff. 

2  Theologische  Jahrbucher,  1851,  p.  514. 

8  Zeitschrift  fur  Wiss.  Th.,  1865,  p.  226. 

4  Kritilc  der  Evangelischen  Geschichte,  III,  1842,  p.  1  ff . 

0  Die  Evangelien  oder  Marcus  und  die  Synopsis,  1870,  p.  197  ff. 

0  Distinguished  as  such  by  the  definite  article. 

''Jesus  Christ  et  les  croyances  messianiques  de  son  temps,  1864,  p. 
140. 


THE  SON  OF  MAN  103 


of  composition."  August  Jacobsen1  affirmed  that  this  was 
the  door  through  which  the  expression  entered  into  the  Gos- 
pels, and  that  it  was  still  absent  in  the  original  form  of 
Mark.  It  is  in  this  direction  also  that  Orello  Cone2  looked 
for  the  source  of  "son  of  man"  as  a  Messianic  title,  though 
he  still  thought  of  Jesus  as  having  used  it  to  denote  that  he 
regarded  himself  as  * '  the  man  by  preeminence. ' '  Brandt  V 
position  was  fundamentally  the  same  as  Volkmar's.  But  he 
added  the  important  suggestion  that  a  recent  origin  and 
spreading  influence  of  this  apocalyptic  figure  would 
naturally  explain  why  an  evangelist  should  have  been 
prompted  to  declare  that  the  man  coming  on  the  cloud  was 
none  else  than  Jesus.  In  H.  L.  Oort's4  dissertation  3n  the 
subject,  the  Messianic  significance  of  the  term  was  strongly 
maintained,  and  its  origin  was  sought  in  Daniel  and  the 
apocalypses  whence  it  was  taken  by  the  evangelists  to  desig- 
nate the  Christian  Messiah.  No  effort  was  made  to  trace 
any  of  the  sayings  containing  the  expression  back  to  Jesus, 
and  the  attempt  to  go  behind  the  written  records  was  dis- 
countenanced in  principle.  The  warning  against  such 
curiosity  was  repeated  by  Van  Manen.5  Thus  a  deep 
chasm  was  found  between  the  Gospels  and  the  actual  words 
of  Jesus  over  which  no  man  could  pass  with  any  degree  of 
assurance.  The  exclusive  regard  to  the  Greek  gospels  tended 
to  crowd  the  whole  question  into  the  background,  as  may  be 
seen  in  Wrede's  important  work6  which  scarcely  alludes 
to  it. 

At  this  juncture  philology  stepped  in  again  to  throw  a 
1  Protestantische  Kirchenzeitung,  1886,  p.  563  ff. 

8  Jesus'  Self -Designation  in  the  Synoptics  in  the  New  World,  1893, 
p.  492  ff. 

*  Die  Evangelische  Geschichte,  1893,  p.  562  ff.  It  was  probably  the 
Messianic  interpretation  rather  than  Dan.,  vii,  itself  that  was  of 
recent  origin,  as  Brandt,  following  Lagarde,  is  inclined  to  think. 

*De  uitdrulcTcing  ovibs  TOV  avOpvyirov  in  net  Nieuwe  Testament,  1893. 

6  Theologisch  Tijdschrift,  1894,  p.  177  ff.  On  the  other  hand,  J.  A. 
Bruins,  ibid.  646  ff .,  in  a  review  of  Oort  's  book  saw  a  defect  in  this 
failure  to  look  for  an  Aramaic  origin  in  some  instances. 

9  Das  Messiasgeheimnis,  1901. 


104  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZARETH 

bridge  across  the  gulf.  Already  in  1862  C.  E.  B.  Uloth1 
had  renewed  the  old  question  as  to  what  word  Jesus  himself 
is  likely  to  have  used.  His  answer  was  that  it  must  have 
been  the  Aramaic  bar  nasha.  But  this  could  have  no  mean- 
ing other  than  "man,"  "the  man."  Jesus  consequently 
called  himself  "the  man,"  the  frail  mortal.  But  even  as 
such  he  had  a  right  to  assure  his  fellow  men  of  the  pardon 
of  their  sins  (Matth.  ix,  6).  Paul  de  Lagarde2  had  also  ob- 
served that  bar  nasha  could  only  mean  "man,"  and  inter- 
preted it  in  that  sense  in  Matth.  viii,  19  ff.  Johannes 
Weiss3  had  returned  to  the  exegesis  of  Grotius  and  Bolten 
in  the  case  of  Mark  ii,  10  and  ii,  28.  And  Wellhausen4  had 
declared  that  the  phrase  Jesus  used  could  only  mean  "man" 
and  consequently  imply  no  claim  to  the  Messiahship.  What 
was  new  in  the  contribution  of  B.  D.  Eerdmans5  was  a  com- 
bination of  Oort's  general  position  on  the  meaning  of  the 
Greek  term  with  the  assertion  that  in  three  places,  (Matth. 
xii,  8,  xii,  32,  xvi,  13)  a  Messianic  significance  is  precluded, 
while  in  two  of  these,  (Matth.  xii,  8,  32)  a  recourse  to  the 
Aramaic  bar  nasha  clearly  indicates  that  Jesus  spoke  of  man 
in  a  generic  sense.  Eerdmans  agreed  with  those  who  could 
not  find  in  bar  nasha  a  Messianic  title.  Yet  he  deemed  it 
possible  that  on  some  occasions  Jesus  met  the  desire  to  see  in 
him  something  more  than  a  man  with  a  declaration  that  he 
was  a  man  as  well  as  they.  The  present  writer6  called  at- 
tention to  the  fact  that  a  careful  critical  analysis  could  on 
independent  grounds  admit  only  four  genuine  sayings  of 

*De  beteeTcenis  van  de  uitdruklcing  "Zoon  des  Menschen,"  Godge- 
leerde  Bijdragen,  1862,  p.  467  ff. 

*Gesammelte  Abhandlungen,  1866,  p.  26;  Deutsche  Schriften,  1878, 
p.  226  f .,  in  Gesammtausgabe  Letzter  Hand. 

9  Die  Predigt  Jesu  vom  Seiche  Gottes,  1892,  p.  571 ;  Die  Nachfolge 
Christi,  1895,  p.  33  ff. 

*  Israelitische  und  judische  Geschichte1,  1894,  p.  312. 

5 De  oorsprong  van  de  uitdruklcing  "Zoon  des  Menschen"  als  evan- 
gelische  Messiastitel,  Th.  Tijdschrift,  1894,  p.  153  ff.  Of.  ibid.,  1895, 
p.  49  ff. 

*  Was  bar  nasha  a  Messianic  Title?  in  Journal  of  Biblical  Litera- 
ture, 1896,  p.  36  ff. 


THE  SON  OF  MAN 


Jesus  containing  this  term  before  the  episode  at  Caesarea 
Philippi,  and  that  in  each  of  these  the  generic  sense  of 
"man"  was  most  suitable;  that  an  utterance  such  as  "man 
must  pass  away"  may  have  given  rise  to  the  peculiar  form 
of  the  prediction  of  his  death ;  that  bar  nasha  cannot  have 
been  understood  as  a  Messianic  title  either  in  Daniel,  Enoch, 
Ezra,  or  the  Aramaic  source  of  the  logia,  while  through  the 
Greek  translation  of  the  Synoptic  apocalypse  it  may  have 
found  its  way  as  a  Messianic  title  into  the  Greek  Gospels. 
In  a  discussion  of  the  mother-tongue  of  Jesus,  Arnold 
Meyer1  briefly  indicated  his  belief  that  in  Mark  ii,  28,  ii,  10 
and  Matth.  xii,  32  an  original  bar  nasha  meaning  "man" 
was  used ;  that  in  Matth.  viii,  20  it  stood  for  "  I, "  and  that 
in  Matth.  xi,  9  it  should  be  translated  "some  one."  The 
discussion  of  the  eschatological  passages  he  deferred  to  a 
second  part  of  his  work,  which  has  not  yet  appeared.2  The 
value  of  Lietzmann 's  contribution  lay  chiefly  in  his  careful 
study  of  early  Christian  literature  which  led  him  to  surmise 
that  the  Greek  title  may  have  originated  in  Asia  Minor  be- 
tween the  death  of  Paul  and  the  year  90  A.  D.,  as  ac- 
quaintance with  it  appears  for  the  first  time  in  Marcion.3 
In  regard  to  the  use  of  bar  nasha  by  Jesus  Lietzmann 
reached  substantially  the  same  conclusion  as  Eerdmans,  the 


1  Jesu  Mutter  sprache,  1896,  pp.  91  ff .,  140  ff. 

3  From  Die  Moderne  Forschung  uber  die  Geschichte  des  Christen- 
turns,  1898,  p.  75,  and  Th.  Lit.  Zeitung,  1898,  col.  272,  it  may  be  in- 
ferred that  Meyer  deems  it  possible  that  in  some  eschatologieal  pas- 
sages the  phrase  "the  coming  of  the  Son  of  Man"  actually  used  by 
Jesus  was  identical  with  the  "coming  of  the  kingdom." 

*Der  Menschensohn,  1896.  Lietzmann 's  lexical  collations  rendered 
good  service.  Some  of  the  forms  were  more  accurately  explained  by 
Wellhausen.  Why  90  A.D.?  Even  if  Harnack's  conjecture  (Chro- 
nologic Altchr.  Lit.,  1897,  p.  298  ff.),  based  on  an  obscure  and  mani- 
festly corrupt  passage  in  Clement  of  Alexandria,  were  more  trust- 
worthy than  that  of  Lipsius,  who  placed  Marcion 's  birth  at  least 
twenty  years  later,  and  Tertullian ;s  statement  that  he  was  a  bishop's 
son  more  reliable  than  Megethius's  that  he  was  himself  a  bishop  (cf. 
H.  U.  Meyboom,  Marcion  en  de  Marcionieten,  1888,  p.  34  ff.),  is 
there  a  shred  of  evidence  that  Marcion  as  a  child  was  familiar  with 
the  gospel  he  quoted  in  Eome  after  140  A.  D.? 


106  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZABETH 

present  writer,  and  Meyer.  Wellhausen1  indicated  his  ac- 
ceptance of  the  new  view,  and  subsequently  gave  a  more 
extended  statement  of  his  reasons.  Pfleiderer2  also  recog- 
nized the  correctness  of  this  position;  Marti3  adopted  it, 
with  the  suggestion  that  Mark  xiii,  26  may  have  given  oc- 
casion for  putting  the  expression  as  a  Messianic  title  on  the 
lips  of  Jesus.  Bevan4  ably  defended  it.  Noldeke5  indi- 
cated his  approval,  and  Staerk6  combined  it  with  Wrede's 
position. 

This  view  has  naturally  met  with  considerable  opposition. 
Van  Manen,  Hilgenfeld,  Gunkel,  Krop,  Schmiedel,  Dalman, 
Baldensperger,  Klopper,  Clemen,  Charles,  Rhees,  Drum- 
mond,  Stevens,  Fiebig  and  Driver  have  urged  objections 
and  indicated  difficulties.  Against  the  tendency  to  assume 
a  genuine  utterance  of  Jesus  back  of  every  saying  in  the 
Synoptic  Gospels  attributed  to  him,  and  to  forget  the  pe- 
culiar character  and  manifestly  late  origin  of  these  writings, 
Van  Manen  V  protest  is  quite  legitimate.  But  since  even 
within  the  Synoptics  it  is  so  often  possible  to  trace  a  growth 
from  a  simpler  form  to  one  unquestionably  colored  by  later 
thought,  the  investigator  certainly  has  the  right  to  assume 
that  this  development  did  not  begin  in  our  present  Gospels. 
By  testing  a  certain  word  in  an  approximation  to  the 
Aramaic  form  it  must  have  had  if  uttered  by  Jesus  an  en- 
tirely different  sense  is  not  seldom  suggested,  that  may 
readily  have  been  obscured  by  a  natural  mistake  in  transla- 
tion or  an  equally  natural  doctrinal  bias.  The  more  foreign 
to  the  thought  of  the  evangelists  the  sentiment  thus  revealed 
proves  to  be,  the  more  importance  must  evidently  be  attached 
to  it.  Schmiedel8  is  unquestionably  right  in  laying  down 

1  Israelitische  und  jiidische  Geschiclite*t  1897,  p.  381;  Skizzen  und 
Vorarleiten,  VI,  1899,  p.  187  ff. 

2  New  World,  1899,  p.  444  ff. 

'  Das  Buch  Daniel,  1901,  p.  53. 

*  Critical  Review,  1899,  p.  148  ff. 

0  Quoted  by  Drummond  in  Journal  of  Theol.  Studies,  1901. 

8  Prot.  Monatshefte,  1902,  p.  297  ff. 

TZ.  c. 

8  Protestantische  Monatshefte,  1898,  p.  307. 


THE  SON  OF  MAST  107 


the  principle  that  "absolute  credibility  should  be  accorded 
to  that  which  cannot  have  been  invented  by  a  tradition  re- 
plete with  veneration  for  Jesus  because  contradicting  it,  and 
most  clearly  in  instances  where  among  the  evangelists  them- 
selves one  or  another  has  actually  effected  a  transformation 
out  of  reverence  for  Jesus."  This  principle  is  perfectly 
sound,  as  every  historian  knows.  It  has  been  applied  by  the 
present  writer  in  his  study  of  the  life  of  Jeremiah,1  and  will 
find  the  fullest  recognition  in  his  treatment  of  the  life  of 
Jesus.  But  why  this  should  have  led  to  a  protest  against  the 
recourse  to  the  vernacular  of  Jesus  is  difficult  to  understand. 
This  acute  critic  has,  strangely  enough,  failed  to  perceive 
that,  if  the  interpretation  based  on  the  Aramaic  is  admitted, 
the  passages  in  question  furnish  some  exceedingly  valuable 
illustrations  of  his  principle. 

If  we  turn  to  the  four  passages  that  report  sayings  of 
Jesus  previous  to  his  visit  to  Caesarea  Philippi,  we  first  meet 
his  assertion  that  bar  nasha,  i.  e.,  man,  has  a  right  to  pardon 
sin,  (Mark  ii,  10) .  The  question  in  debate  is  whether  a  man 
can  assure  his  fellow-man  that  his  sins  are  pardoned.  Jesus 
has  said,  "Child,  thy  sins  are  forgiven!"  The  Pharisees 
maintain  that  God  alone  can  forgive  sins.  There  is  no  hint 
that  they  thought  he  was  exercising  Messianic  functions, 
and  there  is  absolutely  no  evidence  that  the  Jews  expected 
the  Messiah  to  forgive  sins.2  Jesus  affirms  that  man  has  the 
power  to  pardon  sins.  This  thought  finds  expression  again, 
when  Jesus  enjoins  upon  his  disciples  to  exercise  this  author- 
ity, this  blessed  privilege  of  assuring  their  fellow-men  of  the 
pardon  of  their  sins  when  their  disposition  should  justify 
them  in  doing  so  (Matth.  xviii,  18).  This  simple  assurance 
of  forgiveness,  flowing  from  a  living  faith  in  a  heavenly 
Father's  love,  was  to  Jesus  no  sacerdotal  act.  Any  man  had 
a  right  to  do  it.  This  was  a  thought  too  bold  for  the  early 

1  Jeremiah  in  the  Encyclopaedia  Biblica. 

'Scholars  who  quote  Bertholdt's  Christologia  Judaeorum,  1811,  p. 
165  ff .,  should  read  the  remarkable  paragraph  on  the  bearing  of  the 
penalties  of  sins  by  the  Messiah.  All  the  proof -texts  that  refer  to 
the  doctrine  at  all  are  taken  from  the  New  Testament. 


108  THE  PKOPHET  OF  NA2ABETH 

church  to  grasp.  More  congenial  was  the  idea  that  the 
Christ  could  pardon  sins.  The  church  asked,  "Who  is  the 
man  that  can  pardon  sins?''  and  she  answered,  "Christ/' 
It  was  no  doubt  because  the  Greek  translator,  following  the 
custom  of  the  Alexandrian  version,  rendered  the  phrase 
literally  "the  son  of  man"  rather  than  in  good  idiomatic 
Greek,  "the  man,"  which  in  English  would  be  simply 
"man,"  that  the  saying  was  preserved  at  all.  It  is  not 
necessary  to  suppose  that  this  utterance  was  originally  con- 
nected with  a  case  of  healing,  and  therefore  quite  irrelevant 
to  ask  whether  Jesus  thought  that  all  men  could  exercise 
healing  power,  even  if  it  were  easier  than  it  is  to  answer 
such  a  question.  Wellhausen  rightly  observes  that  the  em- 
phasis is  not  on  man  but  on  may.1 

Mark  ii,  23  ff,  presents  an  even  clearer  case.  The  disciples 
have  been  eating  corn  as  they  passed  through  the  field,  and 
are  accused  of  not  keeping  the  sabbath.  Jesus  does  not  seem 
to  have  eaten :  the  accusation  is  against  his  disciples.  But 
he  defends  them  by  quoting  the  example  of  David.  David 
ate  of  the  shewbread  that,  according  to  the  law,  he  had  no 
right  to  eat,  and  gave  his  followers  permission  to  do  so.  The 
point  is  not  that  David  and  "his  greater  son"  may  take  lib- 
erties with  God's  law  which  would  be  wrong  for  others,  but 
clearly  that  so  godly  a  man  as  David  recognized  that  the  sus- 
tenance of  life  was  in  God's  eyes  more  important  than  the 
maintenance  of  the  temple  service.  Lest  this  should  be  mis- 
interpreted, he  adds,  according  to  Matth.  xii,  another  argu- 
ment. The  law  permits  the  priests  to  work  on  the  sabbath, 
thus  regarding  the  commanded  cessation  of  labor  as  less 
important  than  the  maintenance  of  divine  worship.  The 
thought  is  not  that  he  and  his  had  priestly  rights,  for  they 
had  none,  and  Jesus  had  no  interest  in  the  sacrificial  cult, 
as  the  next  statement  shows.  But  even  from  the  standpoint 
of  the  law  there  were  things  more  important  than  the  en- 
joined cessation  of  work.  The  whole  sacrificial  system  was, 
in  his  judgment,  of  less  significance  than  the  principle  of 
love  violated  in  this  charge  preferred  against  the  innocent. 

1 1.  c.,  p.  203. 


THE  SON  OF  MAN  109 


Institutions  have  their  value  only  as  they  serve  man's  good. 
Man  was  not  made  for  the  sabbath,  but  the  sabbath  for  man ; 
therefore  man  is  also  lord  of  the  sabbath.  The  Aramaic 
words  cannot  have  conveyed  any  other  sense  than  this,  and 
this  alone  is  relevant  to  the  argument. 

There  is  no  cogency  in  the  argument,  "Man  was  not  made 
for  the  sake  of  the  sabbath,  but  the  sabbath  for  the  sake  of 
man,  therefore  the  Messiah  has  authority  over  the  sabbath. ' ' 
Even  on  the  assumption  that  by  the  expression  "son  of 
man ' '  Jesus  had  from  the  beginning  of  his  ministry  claimed 
to  be  the  Messiah,  and  had  been  understood  by  his  enemies  to 
do  so,  an  assumption  that  Schmiedel  does  not  share,1  there 
would  be  no  force  in  this  reasoning.  If  it  were  necessary  to 
prove  that  the  Messiah  might  break  the  law  or  authorize  his 
disciples  to  do  so,  how  could  so  startling  a  proposition  be 
established  by  the  general  consideration  that  the  sabbath 
was  made  for  man's  sake?  There  is,  indeed,  no  evidence 
that  the  Jews  expected  their  Messiah  to  violate  or  abrogate 
the  divinely  given  law.  The  very  suggestion  would  prob- 
ably have  produced  a  shock.  If  Jesus  really  desired  to  con- 
vince his  hearers  that  the  Messiah  had  a  right  to  dispense 
from  obedience  to  the  law,  and  that  he  was  the  Messiah,  he 
must  have  understood  that  what  was  needed  for  that  purpose 
was  a  reference  to  a  recognized  Messianic  passage  ascribing 
such  powers  to  the  Messiah,  or  a  firmly  rooted  tradition  to 
this  effect,  and  a  straightforward  presentation  and  vindica- 
tion of  his  claims,  all  the  more  indispensable  if  he  did  not 
wish  his  Messiahship  to  be  taken  in  a  political  sense.  Were 
it  possible  that  the  Aramaic  word  he  used  for  "son  of  man" 
could  have  been  interpreted  as  a  Messianic  title,  the  impres- 
sion left  on  the  Pharisees  would,  after  all,  be  that  he  had  de- 
fended law-breaking  on  the  ground  that  regard  for  the 
lower,  the  sabbath,  must  yield  to  regard  for  the  higher,  man, 
and  had  made  such  a  sweeping  application  of  a  general  prin- 
ciple, true  enough  in  certain  circumstances,  to  himself  and 
followers  as  would  allow  any  man  to  set  aside  any  ordinance 
of  God. 

'I.  e.,p.  296. 


110  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZAEETH 

But  Schmiedel  thinks  that  Jesus  may  have  been  led  to 
regard  himself  as  the  Mesbldh  by  the  practical  question  that 
he,  as  a  reformer,  was  forced  to  meet,  whether  the  validity 
of  the  law  might  be  set  aside.  ' '  The  law  was  intended  to  re- 
main forever.  If  it  must  be  changed,  an  explicit  authoriza- 
tion by  God  was  of  course  necessary.  No  prophet  had  pos- 
sessed this.  It  was  on  the  whole  conceivable  only  in 
connection  with  the  new  order  of  the  world,  the  coming  of 
the  Messianic  age.  Consequently  only  one  could  be  the 
divine  messenger  who  would  dare  to  announce  it,  the  Mes- 
siah. "*  This  ingenious  line  of  reasoning  rests  on  presup- 
positions that  are  untenable.  Jesus  probably  believed  that 
Moses  was  the  author  of  the  Pentateuch.  Yet  he  found  in 
the  prophetic  rolls  the  most  pointed  criticism  of  the  cult. 
Prophets  had  in  the  name  of  God  spoken  against  sacrifices, 
temples,  sabbaths  and  other  ordinances  of  the  law.  The 
entire  evangelic  tradition  shows  that  Jesus  was  deeply  influ- 
enced by  the  prophets,  but  can  at  no  time  have  had  any  great 
interest  in  the  law.  To  a  lawyer  of  the  Pharisaic  party  the 
question  of  the  validity  of  the  codes  might  seem  one  of  life 
and  death ;  the  carpenter  of  Nazareth  lived  in  another  world 
of  thought.  To  draw  a  picture  of  Jewish  society  in  general 
at  the  beginning  of  our  era  from  the  discussion  of  lawyers 
in  the  Talmuds  is  not  only  to  read  back  later  ideas  and  con- 
ditions into  an  earlier  age,  but  to  do  injustice  by  a  false 
generalization  to  a  national  life  that  freely  developed  in 
many  directions.2  Whether  there  was  any  relation  between 
the  Essenes  and  Jesus  or  not,  the  fact  is  significant  that 
these  most  pious  members  of  the  nation  did  not  regard  it 
necessary  to  wait  for  a  Messiah  to  authorize  a  remarkably 
free  attitude  toward  the  law  and  the  temple  service.  It  is 
doubtful  whether  the  process  had  more  than  begun  in  the 

1  l.  c.,  p.  301. 

8  In  addition  to  this  false  generalization,  there  often  appears  a 
shockingly  one-sided  and  unjust  estimate  of  the  type  of  religious  life 
revealed  by  Eabbinic  literature.  This  sectarianism,  which  can  only  be 
overcome  by  a  sounder  historic  method  and  a  long  training  in  ob* 
jective  yet  sympathetic  treatment  of  different  religious  phenomena, 
still  disfigures  many  a  work  of  great  erudition  and  liberal  tendencies. 


THE  SON  OF  MAN  111 


days  of  Jesus,  by  which  the  religious  books  read  in  the 
synagogue  were  reduced  into  a  canon  through  the  exclusion 
of  the  rolls  that  a  majority  of  scholars  did  not  consider  as 
rendering  the  hands  ' '  unclean. ' n  Galilee  was  notorious  for 
what  was  regarded  in  Jerusalem  as  laxer  conceptions.  The 
man  of  Nazareth  who  went  forth  from  his  carpenter 's  bench, 
as  Amos  of  old  from  his  sycamore  trees,  to  prophesy  unto 
Israel  is  not  likely  to  have  scrupled  to  follow  the  example  of 
the  prophets  that  were  before  him  until  he  could  persuade 
himself  that  he  was,  or  was  destined  to  become  in  the  future, 
the  Messiah  some  of  his  countrymen  looked  for.  But  this 
view  of  the  sabbath  that  put  it  wholly  into  the  hands  of  man 
was  too  radical  for  the  church.  By  the  unfortunate,  though 
probably  unintentional,  mistranslation  of  bar  nasha,  she 
gained  the  comforting  thought  that  the  Christ  was  lord  of 
the  sabbath,  and  would  no  doubt  lend  his  authority  to  any 
change  made  in  his  honor.2  The  more  natural  this  thought 
is,  the  more  value  must  be  attached  to  the  earlier  and  so 
markedly  different  form  revealed  by  the  translation  back 
into  the  original  Aramaic. 

Matth.  viii,  19  ff  relates  how  a  scribe  came  to  Jesus  and 
said :  '  *  Master,  I  will  follow  thee  whithersoever  thou  goest. ' ' 
Jesus  answered:  "The  foxes  have  holes,  and  the  birds  of 
the  heavens  nests,  but  bar  nasha,  i.  e.,  man,  has  nowhere  to 
lay  his  head. ' '  Man 's  life  is  full  of  danger  and  uncertainty. 
Where  will  he  reside  to-morrow  ?  The  beast  is  not  deprived 
of  home  and  hearth  by  his  convictions.  The  saying  may  be 
a  proverb  quoted  by  Jesus,  or  an  epigram  coined  on  the  spot. 
No  doubt  the  scribe  saw  quickly  the  hint,  without  the 
thought  ever  crossing  his  mind  that  the  Galilean  teacher  had 
in  the  same  breath  announced  himself  as  the  Messiah,  and 
had  complained  that,  though  he  was  so  great  a  man,  he 
neither  owned  a  house  nor  had  a  place  in  which  to  lodge 
over  night. 

*Cf.  Schmidt,  Bible  Canon,  Critical  View  in  the  Jewish  Encyclo- 
paedia and  Bible  Canon  in  the  New  International  Encyclopaedia. 

2  This  feeling  still  voices  itself  in  some  modern  apologies  for  the 
change  from  the  seventh  to  the  first  day. 


112  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZAEETH 

Of  more  importance  is  Matth.  xii,  32.     The  enemies  of 
Jesus  charged  him  with  performing  his  cures  by  the  aid  of 
Beelzebul.     In  this  he  saw  a  blasphemy,  because  he  felt  that 
his  success  in  curing  the  sick  was  due  to  the  spirit  of  God 
that  had  come  upon  him ;  yet  he  was  careful  to  distinguish 
between  an  attack  upon  a  fellow  man  and  a  denunciation  of 
the  spirit  that  operated  in  him,  saying:     "If  any  one 
speaks  against  bar  nasha,  i.  e.,  man,1  that  may  be  pardoned 
him,  but  he  that  speaks  against  the  holy  spirit  can  have  no 
pardon. ' '    No  one  in  the  audience  could  have  understood  him 
to  say :     ' '  You  may  blaspheme  the  Messiah  with  impunity, 
but  not  the  Holy  Ghost."    The  distinction  is  clearly  be- 
tween the  divine  spirit  and  the  human  instrumentality. 
The  general  principle,  that  under  all  circumstances  a  man 
should  be  willing  to  forgive  what  is  said  against  him  by  his 
fellow  man,  put  no  emphasis  upon  the  maligned  speaker. 
To  the  church  it  was  quite  a  different  thing  to  speak  against 
an  ordinary  man  from  speaking  against  the  Christ.     The 
spirit  that  possessed  Jesus  was  evidently  to  himself  an  ob- 
jective reality.     From  this  divine  spirit  he  distinguished 
himself.     For  it  he  cherished  the  utmost  reverence.     That 
any  one  should  have  called  this  mysterious,  energizing, 
beatifying  prophetic  spirit  Beelzebul  filled  him  with  hor- 
ror.    How  could  such  a  sin  be  pardoned?     The  more  diffi- 
cult it  was  for  the  church  thus  to  distinguish  between  the 
man  Jesus  and  the  divine  spirit  that,  according  to  his  view, 
dwelt  in  all  God's  children,  the  more  probable  is  the  earlier 
form  that  comes  to  view  in  the  Aramaic  original.     It  is  pos- 
sible that  words  uttered  on  two  occasions  have  been  put 
together  in  Matthew's  account. 

Matth.  xvi,  13  is  a  connate  reading.  The  Sinaitic  Syriac 
has  a  .more  original  form,  ' l  What  do  men  say  concerning 
me?  that  is  Who  is  this  son  of  man?"  "This"  may  be  set 
to  the  account  of  the  Aramaic  translator,  as  Schmiedel  has 
suggested.  "Who  is  the  son  of  man?"  may  then  be  a  later 

1  On  the  basis  of  a  reading  that  Marcion  seems  to  have  had,  Well- 
hausen  suggests  as  the  original  " whatever  is  said  by  a  man,"  "all 
that  man  says, ' '  Skizzen  und  Vorarbeiten,  VI,  p.  204. 


THE  SON  OF  MAN  113 


interpolation  in  the  Greek  text.  To  the  mind  of  the  inter- 
polator Jesus  had  already  designated  himself  as  the  Messiah 
by  the  term  Son  of  Man.  But  the  answer  in  the  text  seemed 
to  him  to  give  a  fuller  insight  into  the  nature  of  the  Messiah. 
He  was  to  him  the  Son  of  God  in  a  deeper  sense.  To  this 
extent  Van  Manen  is  probably  right. 

As  to  the  remarkable  silence  concerning  this  title  in  early 
Christian  literature  outside  of  the  Gospels,  it  can  in  most 
instances  neither  be  affirmed  nor  denied  that  it  is  due  to 
ignorance.  But  it  is  difficult  to  escape  the  impression  that 
its  absence  in  the  Johannine  apocalypse1  indicates  that  it 
had  not  yet  appeared  as  a  Messianic  title  when  in  the  reign 
of  Domitian2  this  book  was  written.  Acts  vii,  56  shows  that 
at  a  somewhat  later  date  a  Christian  writer  did  not  hesitate 
to  put  the  title  upon  the  lips  of  the  proto-martyr  when 
speaking  of  Jesus.3 

Hilgenfeld4  has  called  attention  to  a  translation  by 
Jerome5  of  a  passage  in  his  Hebrew  Gospel,  where  he  read 
that  Jesus  after  his  resurrection  "took  a  bread,  blessed, 
brake  it  and  gave  it  to  James  the  Just,  saying :  l  my  brother, 
eat  thy  bread  because  the  son  of  man  has  risen  from  those 
that  sleep. '  '  The  question  is,  what  Aramaic  word  Jerome 
rendered  by  filius  hominis.  Hilgenfeld  thinks  it  may  have 
been  bereh  de  nasha.  Thus  the  Edessene  Christians  at- 
tempted to  render  the  Greek  title.  But  this  awkward  if 

1  In  Eev.,  i,  13,  and  xiv,  14,  the  term  lacks  the  article. 

2  Cf .  the  convincing  arguments  of  Harnack,  Chronologic  d.  Alt.  Lit.t 
1897,  p.  245  ff.     That  earlier  material  was  used  is  as  evident  as  that 
there  are  many  additions  that  belong  to  the  second  century. 

8Schmiedel  has  also  expressed  a  desire  for  a  more  exhaustive  pre- 
sentation of  the  renderings  of  "man"  and  "Son  of  Man"  in  the 
different  Syriac  versions  of  the  Bible.  Such  a  survey,  as  complete  as 
the  absence  of  a  concordance  permits,  correcting  some  unfortunate 
errors  made  by  Driver,  Lietzmann  and  others  and  raising  some  new 
and  interesting  problems,  not,  however,  affecting  the  main  ques- 
tion, will  be  found  in  my  article  Son  of  Man,  in  Vol.  IV,  of  the 
Encyclopaedia  Biblica. 

*  Berliner  philologische  Wochenschrift,  1897,  p.  1520  ff, 

*De  viris  illust. 

a 


114  THE  PROPHET  OF  NAZAEETH 

not  ungrammatical1  form  was  only  created  by  the  dire  neces- 
sity of  translating  a  Greek  expression  for  which  there  was 
no  idiomatic  Aramaic  equivalent,  because  it  was  itself  a 
slavishly  literal  rendering  of  an  Aramaic  phrase  that  meant 
simply  "man,"  and  under  no  circumstances  could  be  a  title. 
The  saying  is  not  genuine  and  throws  no  light  on  the  subject, 
except  that  it  would  show  how  little  Christian  writers 
among  the  Ebionites  hesitated  to  put  the  phrase  into  the 
mouth  of  Jesus,  as  Lietzmann  has  well  pointed  out,2  if  we 
could  be  sure  that  the  original  reading  of  the  Hebrew  Gospel 
has  been  preserved.  But  this  is  far  from  certain,  as  another 
variant  exists.3 

Against  the  fundamental  assumption  of  all  Semitic 
scholars  who  had  dealt  with  the  subject,  that  at  the  time  of 
Jesus  bar  nasha  was  the  designation  of  "man"  in  Galilean 
Aramaic,  a  protest  was  entered  by  Gustaf  Dalman  *  He 
pointed  out  that  this  phrase  does  not  occur  in  Biblical 
Aramaic,  the  Palmyrene  and  Nabataean  inscriptions,  Tar- 
gum  Onkelos,  and  the  Samaritan  Targum  to  the  Pentateuch, 
and  maintained  that  ~bar  nasha  was  an  innovation  in  the 
later  Galilean  and  Christian  Palestinian  literature  brought 
in  from  Edessa.  Bevan5  replied,  that  in  the  Targums  the 
translators  simply  showed  their  usual  tendency  to  retain  the 
Hebrew  idiom ;  that  the  occasions  for  using  the  phrase  in  the 
inscriptions  were  naturally  few;  that  the  various  uses  of 
enash  and  bar  enash  which  appear  concurrently  in  Syriac 
are  all  found  in  one  or  another  of  the  Palestinian  dialects, 
and  that  no  Palestinian  dialect  employs  any  of  these  forms 
in  a  sense  unknown  in  Syriac.  Wellhausen6  found  it  not  in- 
credible that  the  distinctive  term  for  "man,"  "the  human 
being,"  should  have  been  lacking  here  and  there,  but 

1  Cf .   Wellhausen,   Der   Syrische  Evangelienpalimpsest  vom   Sinai, 
1895,  p.  12,  but  also  Schmidt  in  Journal  of  Bib.  Lit.,  1896,  p.  46. 
a  1.  c.,  p.  10. 

8  See  Schmidt,  "Son  of  Man11  in  Encyclopaedia  Biblica. 
4  Die  Worte  Jesu,  1898,  p.  191  ff. 
6  Critical  Review,  1899,  p.  148  ff. 
8  Slciszen  und  Vorarbeiten,  VI,  p.  v  ff. 


THE  SON  OF  MAN  115 


pointed  to  Dan.  vii,  13,  the  Evangeliarium,  and  the  Targum 
and  Talmud  edited  in  Galilee  as  evidence  of  its  existence  in 
Palestine,  and  considered  as  arbitrary  the  conjecture  that 
it  was  due  to  Edessene  influence.  Dalman  no  doubt  has 
indicated  a  real  tendency  of  Aramaic  speech  in  this  respect ; 
but  the  older  Palestinian  literature  is  too  slight  to  show  at 
what  time  the  definite  appellative  came  into  more  common 
use,  and  there  is  a  strong  presumption  in  favor  of  its  earlier 
appearance  in  Galilee.  It  is  significant  that  Dalman  him- 
self can  find  no  other  phrase  than  bar  nasha  likely  to  have 
been  used  by  Jesus.  The  idea  that  he  employed  this  expres- 
sion, not  in  the  ordinary  sense  that  it  has  in  all  Aramaic  dia- 
lects where  it  occurs,  and  in  all  the  literary  remains  of  the 
Galilean  dialect,  but  as  an  innovation  to  designate  himself 
as  "the  human  being  weak  by  nature  that  God  will  make 
lord  of  the  world,''  lacks  every  semblance  of  plausibility. 
Even  according  to  Dalman  Jesus  used  the  term  bar  nasha; 
and  he  has  well  shown  that  this  cannot  be  proved  to  be  a 
Messianic  title  either  from  Enoch,  IV  Ezra,  or  any  other 
source. 

The  authority  of  so  accomplished  a  student  of  Palestinian 
Aramaic  as  Dalman  naturally  influenced  scholars  unpre- 
pared to  pass  an  independent  judgment.  Baldensperger1 
voiced  his  premature  rejoicing  over  the  final  defeat  of  the 
philological  explanation,  and  hinted  at  undue  philosophical 
prepossessions.  Rush  Rhees2  excused  himself  from  consider- 
ing the  arguments  presented  by  the  present  writer  on  the 
ground  that  "Schmidt  is  manifestly  hampered  by  the  pre- 
judgment  that  Jesus  cannot  have  made  for  himself  at  the 
outset  any  supernatural  claims."  This  was  not  the  case. 
The  only  prejudgment  was  that  Jesus  did  not  speak  Greek, 
and  that  it  was  incumbent  on  the  student  of  the  Gospels  to 
use  all  available  means  to  find  out  what  he  actually  saicl 
At  the  outset  it  seemed  altogether  likely  that  the  teaching, 
conduct,  and  tragic  fate  of  Jesus  could  be  best  accounted  for 
on  the  assumption  that  he  regarded  himself  as  the  Messiah, 

1  TTieologische  Eundschau,  1900,  p.  201  ff. 
'Journal  of  Bib.  Lit.,  XVII,  96, 


116  THE  PROPHET  OF  NAZARETH 

and  made  for  himself  such  supernatural  claims  as  this  posi- 
tion implied.  On  a  priori  grounds  it  is  difficult  to  see  why 
it  should  not  have  been  as  possible  for  Jesus  to  make  such 
claims  as  for  a  Simon  bar  Kozeba.  It  would  have  been  an 
easier  road  to  travel  than  the  narrow  path  he  trod.  That 
he  rose  above  even  the  desire  to  become  a  righteous  king,  a 
world-conquering  Messiah,  can  be  explained  only  by  his 
peculiar  moral  disposition  and  his  supreme  religious  genius. 
But  this  result  of  a  long  series  of  investigations  was  wholly 
unexpected. 

Charles's  translation  of  the  Book  of  Enoch  unintention- 
ally led  a  number  of  scholars  into  confusion.  To  argue 
from  even  the  best  of  translations  is  always  a  hazardous  un- 
dertaking. As  much  stress  was  laid  on  the  demonstrative 
pronoun  "this"  or  "that,"  the  present  writer  called  atten- 
tion to  the  fact  that  the  demonstrative  is  often  used  in  the 
Ethiopic  for  the  lacking  definite  article,  and  that  therefore 
"this  son  of  man"  may  be  the  rendering  of  a  Greek  "the 
son  of  man. ' n  Charles2  has  subsequently  shown  a  number 
of  instances  in  Enoch  of  this  usage,  and  drawn  the  con- 
clusion that  the  Greek  text  had  everywhere  "the  son  of 
man"  as  a  Messianic  title.  But  a  more  careful  discrimina- 
tion may  be  necessary.  It  is  generally  assumed  that  the 
book  of  Enoch  was  translated  from  the  Greek  into  Ethiopic 
by  a  Christian.  If  so,  it  is  very  strange  that  he  should  indi- 
cate the  article  by  a  demonstrative  when  the  translation  of 
the  New  Testament  had  never  done  so  in  the  case  of  "the 
son  of  man.  "3  Not  less  peculiar  would  it  be  that  he  should 
not  have  used  uniformly  the  term  walda  eguala  emdhyau 
("son  of  the  offspring  of  the  mother  of  the  living"),  in- 
variably employed  in  the  Gospels,  but  as  often  other  terms. 
It  is  not  impossible,  however,  that  the  book  was  translated 
by  a  Jew  before  Christianity  was  introduced.  This  would 

1  Journal  of  Bib.  Lit.,  1896,  p.  48. 

2  A   Critical  History  of  the  Doctrine  of  a  Future  Life,  1899,  p. 
214  f. 

'Flemming  in  Lietzmann,  Zur  Menscnensolinfrage,  1899,  p.  5. 
My  own  collation  corroborates  that  of  Flemming  on  this  point, 


THE  SON  OF  MAN  117 

account  for  its  place  in  the  Jewish,  canon  as  well  as  in  the 
Christian.1  In  that  case  the  same  freedom  would  be  natural 
as  that  obtaining  in  the  Old  Testament.  All  passages  con- 
taining the  distinctive  form  of  the  expression  in  the 
Ethiopic  Gospels  may  then  have  been  retouched  by  Christian 
copyists.  But  did  the  Greek  text  read  ' '  this  son  of  man ' '  or 
"the  son  of  man"  ?  The  latter  is  possible.  But  is  it  prob- 
able? That  depends  upon  what  form  the  translator  into 
Greek  found  in  his  Aramaic  original,  and  what  his  own 
faith  was.  If  he  was  a  Christian,  familiar  with  the  Gospels, 
and  convinced  that  none  else  than  the  Christ  was  referred 
to,  he  may  have  written  "the  son  of  man,"  whether  the 
Aramaic  had  a  demonstrative  or  not.  If  he  was  a  Jew, 
which  is  more  probable,  he  would  naturally  think  of  Dan- 
iel's "son  of  man,"  and  the  ille  homo  of  IV  Ezra  xiii,  12, 
suggests  that  he  may  have  read  "the  son  of  man,"  ~bar 
nasha  with  a  demonstrative.  It  is  difficult  to  think  through 
En.  xlvi  in  the  Aramaic  without  being  impressed  with  the 
naturalness  of  the  demonstrative.  ' '  I  saw  one  like  a  man ; ' ' 
"I  asked  in  regard  to  that  man ;"  "he  answered :  this  is  the 
man  who  has  righteousness;"  "this  man  whom  thou  hast 
seen  will  arouse  the  kings  .  .  .  from  their  thrones."  This 
is  evidently  in  good  order.  "In  that  hour  that  man  was 
named  before  the  Lord  of  Spirits"  (xlviii,  2)  follows 
naturally.  Toward  the  end  of  the  book  it  is  more  difficult 
to  determine  where  the  Greek  translator  may  have  found  a 
bar  nasha  in  his  Aramaic  text.  That  in  the  original  "son 
of  man"  occurred  as  a  Messianic  title,  is  impossible  to  af- 
firm, and  altogether  improbable. 

The  most  serious  objection  of  Krop2  is  derived  from  the 
presence  of  the  title  in  predictions  of  Jesus '  death  and  resur- 
rection. How  was  the  title  brought  from  the  eschatological 
series  into  so  different  a  setting?  It  may  be  answered  that 
when  once  utterances  concerning  the  coming  of  the  son  of 
man  had  been  placed  on  the  lips  of  Jesus,  and  the  expression 

1Cf.  the  account  of  James  Bruce  in  Eichard  Lawrence's  editio 
princeps  Libri  Enoch  prophetae  versio  Aethiopica,  1838,  p.  xi. 
3  La  pens6e  de  Jesus  sur  le  royaume  de  dieu,  1897. 


118  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZAEETH 

consequently  understood  as  a  self-designation  it  may  readily 
have  been  substituted  for  ' '  I/ '  as  the  vacillating  tradition  in 
many  places  indicates,  and  adopted  in  the  creation  of  new 
oracles.  It  is  probable  that  Jesus  actually  said,  when  the 
prophet's  death  began  to  appear  to  him  as  a  possible  issue 
of  his  career:  "man  must  pass  away"  (Mark  xiv,  21)  and 
added:  "but  he  will  rise  again"  (Mark  ix,  31),  as  he  no 
doubt  believed  in  a  resurrection  of  the  dead,  though  his  con» 
ception  of  it  seems  to  have  approached  the  Essene  idea 
(Mark  xii,  26,  27).  Translated  into  Greek,  such  a  saying 
would  almost  inevitably  have  been  interpreted  as  referring 
to  Jesus  himself  exclusively. 

Gunkel's1  opposition  comes  from  his  strong  conviction 
that  "the  man"  is  a  mythological  figure  of  Babylonian, 
origin.  So  far  as  the  personality  is  concerned  to  whom 
Daniel,  Enoch  and  Ezra  refer,  he  is  no  doubt  right  in  assum- 
ing an  ultimate  Babylonian  origin.  The  conflict  between 
Marduk  and  Tiamat  became  in  Judaism  a  conflict  between 
Yahwe  and  the  great  chaos-monster.  What  was  first 
ascribed  to  Yahwe  himself  was  subsequently  assigned  to  an 
angel.  This  angel  was  Michael.  After  the  destruction  of 
the  beast  this  celestial  representative  of  Israel  in  Dan.  vii 
comes  with  the  clouds  to  receive  the  world-empire.2  The 

1  Zeitschrift  fur  Wiss.  Theologie,  1899.  p.  581  ff.  Das  Vierte  Buch 
Esra  in  Kautzsch,  Pseudepigraphen,  1900,  p.  347.  Gunkel  is  quite 
right  in  his  contention  that  religious  ideas  in  general,  and  particu- 
larly eschatological  conceptions,  occurring  only  sporadically  and  by 
way  of  allusion  in  extant  literature,  may  have  lived  quite  a  flourishing 
life  in  the  thoughts  of  men  and  may  have  had  their  origin  in  Oriental 
mythology.  But  it  must  not  be  forgotten  that  a  possibility  is  by  no 
means  a  necessity,  that  for  certain  knowledge  we  are  wholly  dependent 
upon  the  literary  remains,  that,  when  these  indicate  a  development  of 
thought,  a  corresponding  growth  is  likely  to  have  taken  place  in  the 
social  milieu  whence  these  expressions  come,  and  that  it  is  safer  to  err 
on  the  side  of  a  too  conservative  clinging  to  the  literary  documents 
than  by  giving  too  free  reins  to  speculations  as  to  what  may  have 
come  down  from  immemorial  times  ("uralt")  or  from  foreign 
mythology. 

'Marti,  in  a  friendly  note  to  the  author,  suggests  as  a  difficulty 
against  supposing  Michael  to  be  meant  that  one  would  expect  the 
other  nations  in  that  case  to  be  likewise  represented  by  their  angels, 


THE  SON  OF  MAN  119 


development  of  the  Messianic  idea  led  to  a  transfer  of  these 
functions  to  the  Messiah.  But  that  the  celestial  being  de- 
scribed, as  every  other  angel,  as  having  the  appearance  of  a 
man,  had  for  his  proper  name  "the  human  being, "  lacks  all 
probability.  Hommel1  has  called  attention  to  the  interest- 
ing fact  that  Adapa,  the  human  counterpart  of  Marduk,  is 
spoken  of  as  zir  amiluti  ("seed  of  men").  But  how  zir 
amiluti  can  mean  "he  from  whose  seed  the  whole  of  man- 
kind is  sprung"  is  as  difficult  to  understand  as  how  "spring 
of  mankind"  could  possibly  be  the  equivalent  of  "son  of 
man."  The  plain  meaning  of. 'zir  amiluii  is  "offspring  of 
human  parents, ' '  and  there  is  no  intimation  that  tnis  was  a 
title,  or  that  Adapa  was  the  first  man. 

It  is  important,  however,  to  bear  in  mind  the  celestial 
origin  of  this  figure.  Beings  in  human  shape  that  move 
about  among  the  clouds  or  at  the  confines  of  the  deep  are  not 
men  but  angels.  In  Dan.  viii,  15  the  angel  Gabriel  is  intro- 
duced as  "one  having  the  appearance  of  a  man;"  in  x,  16 
he  is  like  "the  sons  of  men;"  in  iii,  25  "four  men"  are  re- 
ferred to,  yet  one  of  them  is  like  "a  son  of  the  gods;"  in 
ix,  21  the  angel  is  referred  to  as  "the  man  Gabriel,"  and  so 
again  in  x,  5,  xii,  6,  7.  In  Rev.  xiv,  14  "like  a  son  of  man" 
is  manifestly  a  rendering  of  kebar  enash  of  Dan.  vii,  13,  yet 
it  is,  as  the  next  verse  shows,  a  designation  of  an  angel ;  in 
En.  Ixxxvii,  2  the  four  archangels  are  all  * '  like  white  men. ' '. 
The  impression  left  upon  an  ancient  reader  of  Dan.  vii,  En. 
xlvi,  IV  Ezra  xiii,  Rev.  i,  or  the  Synoptic  apocalypse  was 
but  deems  it  necessary  to  put  more  emphasis  than  has  been  done  on 
the  " celestial,  angelic  character  of  Israel."  However,  if  the  myth- 
ical origin  is  admitted,  that  would  explain  the  form.  The  violation 
of  the  chaos-monster  by  Yah  we  (or  his  representative)  was  a  familiar 
thought;  so  also  the  identification  of  the  chaos-monster  with  a 
heathen  world-power.  The  slaying  of  an  angel  would  be  quite  a 
different  thing.  Daniel  speaks  with  evident  shyness  about  the  great 
angels  of  Persia  and  of  Greece.  The  more  earnestly  it  is  attempted 
to  make  an  angel  out  of  Israel,  the  more  difficult  it  will  become  to 
avoid  the  conclusion  that  Israel's  angel  is  meant. 

1The  Expository  Times,  May,  1900,  p.  341  ff.  A.  Jeremias  had 
already  briefly  suggested  the  comparison  in  Roscher's  Lexicon  d. 
griech.  und  rom.  Mythologie,  III,  586. 


120  THE  PROPHET  OF  NAZAEETH 

that  of  an  occupant  of  the  celestial  world,  not  of  a  frail  mor- 
tal. This  meets  the  weightiest  objection  of  Drummond,1  that 
the  church  would  have  preferred  to  invent  some  higher  title. 
If  Jesus  used  the  term  bar  nasha,  as  no  Semitic  scholar 
doubts,  he  can  have  been  understood  to  mean  by  it  only 
"man"  in  general.  In  the  passages  that  on  independent 
grounds  are  most  likely  to  be  genuine  it  can  have  been  in- 
tended to  mean  nothing  else.  When  the  church  identified 
him  with  the  Danielic  "son  of  man,"  it  applied  to  him  a 
high  title.  Daniel's  celestial  being  was  no  ordinary  man. 

That  Jesus  chose  to  call  himself  "the  man"  in  order  to 
show  that  he  was  the  man  of  Daniel's  vision,  rather  than  the 
"son  of  David"  or  Messiah  expected  by  the  people,  as 
Kloepper2  seems  to  think,  is  well  nigh  inconceivable.  What 
moral  qualities  does  Daniel's  "man"  possess?  What 
ethical  content  could  men  have  given  to  the  conception  of 
one  whose  appearance  meant  to  them  the  establishment  of 
the  empire  of  the  Jews  that  was  not  also  given  to  the  current 
Messianic  ideal?  Clemen3  asks  why  bar  nasha  cannot  have 
been  a  Messianic  title  at  the  time  of  Jesus  as  well  as  later. 
The  answer  is  obvious.  There  is  not  the  slightest  evidence 
that  bar  nasha  ever  was  used  as  a  Messianic  title.  There  is 
reason  to  believe  that  on  some  occasions  Jesus  used  it  in  the 
sense  it  commonly  and  exclusively  has  in  extant  Aramaic 
literature.  In  these  instances  it  has  been  wrongly  trans- 
lated in  the  Greek  gospels  by  a  title  apparently  not  yet 
drawn  from  the  book  of  Daniel  when  Kevelation  and  Fourth 
Ezra  were  written  in  the  reign  of  Domitian. 

But  Stevens4  thinks  that l '  the  positive  and  abundant  evi- 
dence of  the  Gospels  to  the  effect  that  Jesus  used  'the  son  of 
man'  (or  its  equivalent)  to  designate  an  official  peculiar- 
ity (to  claim  no  more)  of  his  person  and  work  is  not  to  be 
set  aside  by  mere  conjectures  as  to  the  supposed  use  of 
Aramaic  words. ' '  One  who  reads  without  critical  consider- 

1  Journal  of  Theological  Studies,  July,  1901,  p.  539  ff. 

2  Zeitschrift  fur  Wissenschaftliche  Theologie,  1899,  p.  161  ff. 
8  Theologische  Literatur-Zeitung,  1899,  col.  489. 

4  The  Teaching  of  Jesus,  1901,  p.  91. 


THE  SON  OF  MAN 


121 


ations  the  four  Greek  gospels  and  observes  that  the  term  oc- 
curs not  less  than  eighty-one  times1  is  naturally  impressed 
1  As  it  is  of  some  importance  to  know  which  of  these  occur  in  three, 
in  two,  or  only  in  one  of  the  gospels,  the  following  arrangement  may 
be  made  for  convenience  sake,  involving  no  judgment  as  to  the  num- 
ber of  times,  or  separate  occasions,  when  the  evangelists  considered 
Jesus  as  having  used  the  expression.  Eight  in  Matth.,  Mark,  and 
Luke: 


1. 

Matth.,       ix, 

6 

Mark, 

ii,  10 

Luke, 

v, 

24 

2. 

M 

xii, 

8 

tt 

ii,  28 

tt 

vi, 

5 

3. 

« 

xvi, 

27 

tt 

viii,  38 

tt 

ix, 

26 

4. 

« 

xvii, 

22<z 

tt 

ix,  31 

it 

ix, 

44 

5. 

« 

XX, 

18 

tt 

x,33 

tt 

xviii, 

31 

6. 

« 

xxiv, 

306 

n 

xiii,  26 

it 

xxi, 

27 

7. 

n 

xxvi, 

24a 

tt 

xiv,  21 

n 

xxii, 

22 

8. 

ft 

xxvi, 

64 

tt 

xiv,  62 

M 

xxii, 

69 

Five  in  Matth.  and 

Mark: 

9. 

Matth., 

xvii, 

9 

Mark, 

ix, 

9 

10. 

"        xvii,  12 

n 

ix, 

12 

11. 

"          xx,  28 

1  1 

X, 

45 

12. 

xxvi, 

24b 

n 

xiv, 

21b 

13. 

'  '         xxvi, 

45 

tf 

xiv, 

41 

Eight 

in  Matth.  and  Luke  : 

14. 

Matth., 

viii, 

20 

Luke, 

i*, 

58 

15. 

1  1 

xi, 

19 

tt 

vii, 

34 

16. 

M 

xii, 

32 

tt 

xii, 

10a 

17. 

1  1 

xii, 

40 

tt 

xi, 

30 

18. 

1  1 

xxiv, 

27 

n 

xvii, 

24 

19. 

11 

xxiv, 

37 

ft 

xvii, 

26 

20. 

11 

xxiv, 

39 

ii 

xvii, 

30 

21. 

" 

xxiv, 

44 

it 

xii, 

40 

One  in  Mark  and  Luke  : 

22.  Mark,  viii,  31 
Nine  in  Matth.  alone: 

23.  Matth., 

24.  " 

25.  " 

26.  " 

27.  " 
Eight  in  Luke  alone: 

32.  Luke,        vi,  22 

33.  "          xii    8 


Luke,  ix,  2 


x,  23 

28.  Matth., 

xix,  28 

xiii,  37 

29.       " 

xxiv,  30a 

xiii,  41 

30.      " 

xxv,  31 

xvi,  13 

31.       " 

xxvi,  2 

xvi,  28 

34. 
35. 


22 


xviii,  8 


36.  Luke, 

37.  " 

38.  " 

39.  " 


xix,  10 

xxi,  36 

xxii,  48 

xxiv,  7 


In  the  fourth  Gospel  it  occurs  twelve  times,  viz.:  i,  51;  iii,  13,  14 
(v.  27),  vi,  27,  53,  62;  viii,  28;  ix,  35;  xii,  23,  34  a  6;  xiii,  31. 


122  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZAEETH 

with  "the  positive  and  abundant  evidence"  of  its  use.  But 
the  moment  he  begins  to  compare  the  different  gospels  and 
examine  their  peculiarities  the  number  becomes  at  once  less 
significant.  If  he  understands  at  all  the  character  of  the 
Fourth  Gospel,  he  knows  that  the  twelve  instances  in  which 
the  term  is  used  in  it  only  indicate  the  familiarity  of  its 
author  with  the  Synoptics,  or  the  occurrence  of  the  title  in 
Asia  Minor  a  century  after  the  time  of  Jesus.  It  is  quite 
impossible  to  read  the  sixty-nine  passages  in  the  Synoptics 
without  seeing  that  there  are  numerous  parallels.  Driver1 
removes  twenty-nine  and  looks  upon  forty  as  representing  as 
many  distinct  utterances  by  Jesus.  But  this  procedure,  sim- 
ple as  it  is,  implies  a  criticism  that  cannot  stop  there.  For 
if  the  doublets  and  triplets  are  examined  it  is  manifest  that, 
though  there  is  sufficient  agreement  to  show  a  purpose  to 
report  the  same  saying,  verbal  accuracy  may  not  be  expected, 
and  a  choice  must  be  made  on  grounds  of  probability.  It  is 
also  seen  that  in  the  case  of  seventeen  passages  found  only 
in  Matthew  or  in  Luke,  some  are  clearly  duplicates  of  say- 
ings already  recorded  within  these  gospels,  others  have 
synoptic  parallels  in  which  the  phrase  does  not  occur,  and 
others  still  are  manifestly  later  glosses.  Thus  Matthew 
x,  23,  which  is  not  found  in  the  parallel  passage,  Luke  xii, 
11  f .,  reflects  the  missionary  ideas  and  hopes  of  the  Jewish- 
Christian  Church.  The  allegorical  interpretation  of  the 
parable  of  the  tares  in  Matth.  xiii,  37-41  is  clearly  from  the 
hand  of  the  evangelist.  The  account  in  Matth.  xvi,  13-20 
has  evidently  suffered  from  later  expansions,  such  as  "the 
Son  of  the  living  God"  in  vs.  16,  the  pontifical  diploma  in 
vss.  17-19,  and  the  second  question,  "Who  is  this  son  of 
man"  added  to  the  query,  "What  do  men  say  concerning 
me?"  in  our  oldest  witness  to  the  text,  the  Sinaitic  Syriac. 
In  Matth.  xvi,  28,  the  Son  of  Man  coming  in  his  kingdom 
has  probably  taken  the  place  of  "the  kingdom  of  heaven," 
as  is  suggested  by  Luke  ix,  27,  where  ' l  the  kingdom  of  God ' ' 
occurs,  and  Mark  ix,  1,  which  reads  "the  kingdom  of  God 

1  Article  Son  of  Man  in  Hastings'  Bible  Dictionary. 


THE  SON  OF  MAN  123 


already  come  with  power. "  A  comparison  of  Matth.  xix, 
28  f .  with  Mark  x,  29  and  Luke  xviii,  29  shows  that  each 
evangelist  has  considerably  modified  the  original  utterance, 
which  probably  had  "for  the  sake  of  the  kingdom  of 
heaven. "  If  "the  sign  of  the  son  of  man"  in  Matth.  xxiv, 
30a  had  formed  a  part  of  the  original  apocalypse,  it  would 
no  doubt  have  been  preserved  by  Mark  and  Luke.  Matth. 
xxv,  31  is  plainly  of  very  late  origin,  as  is  the  parable  itself, 
reflecting  the  existence  of  the  Church  among  the  heathen 
nations,  and  proclaiming  the  doctrine  that  the  pagans  are 
to  be  judged  according  to  their  treatment  of  the  Christians, 
In  Matth.  xxvi,  2  the  statement  of  a  fact  (Mark  xiv,  1  f.y 
Luke  xxii,  If.)  has  been  changed  into  a  prophecy.  In  Luke 
vi,  22  the  phrase  "for  my  sake/'  itself  a  late  addition  in 
Matth.  v,  11,  has  been  changed  into  "for  the  sake  of  the  son 
of  man."  Similarly  "I"  in  Matth.  x,  32,  itself  secondary, 
has  been  transformed  into  "son  of  man"  in  Luke  xii,  8. 
Luke  xvii,  20-22  is  not  in  harmony  with  what  follows  and 
the  disenchantment  of  the  Church  is  clearly  indicated  in  vs. 
22.  Luke  xviii,  8b  expresses  the  same  disappointment  as 
regards  the  second  coming,  as  Juelicher1  has  pointed  out. 
Luke  xix,  10  is  a  homeless  fragment,  interpolated  here  as  in 
Matth.  xviii,  11,  but  contains  a  beautiful  tribute  to  Jesus. 
Wernle2  rightly  regards  Luke  xxi,  34-36  as  an  exhortation 
by  the  evangelist  himself.  The  same  judgment  is,  with  good 
reason,  passed  upon  Luke  xxii,  48  by  Holtzmann.3  In 
Matth.  xxvi,  50  the  text  is  scarcely  sound.  Luke  xxii,  48 
may  go  back  to  an  Aramaic  question,  "  Is  it  with  a  kiss  that 
thou  betrayest  a  man  (bar  nash)?"  But  the  tradition  is 
very  uncertain,  as  the  parallel  passage  shows.  In  Luke 
xxvii,  7  two  men  in  dazzling  raiment,  evidently  angels,  re- 
mind the  women  that  Jesus  had  predicted  his  death  and 
resurrection.  Speeches  made  by  angels  are  not  regarded  by 
historians  as  belonging  to  their  proper  field.  But  it  is  in- 
teresting to  observe  that  the  quotation  made  by  the  angel 

1  Gleichnisreden  Jesu,  1899,  II,  p.  288. 

2  Die  Synoptische  Frage,  1899,  p.  17. 
*Hand  Commentar,  2nd  ed.,  1901,  p.  414. 


124  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZARETH 

does  not  quite  correspond  to  any  prediction  recorded  in  the 
gospel.  So  little  did  Luke  care  about  accuracy.  It  is  im- 
possible to  study  even  these  passages  occurring  only  in  one 
gospel  without  being  impressed  with  the  freedom  with 
which  sayings  of  Jesus  were  modified  as  they  passed  from 
lip  to  lip  and  new  ones  were  created. 

Among  the  eight  passages  found  only  in  Matth.  and  Luke, 
Matth.  viii,  20  (Lk  ix,  58),  xi,  19  (vii,  34),  and  xii,  32a 
(xii,  lOa)  probably  go  back  to  original  sayings  of  Jesus,  as 
we  have  seen;  xii,  40  (xi,  30)  is  an  interpolation,  as  is  gen- 
erally recognized;  xxiv,  27,  37,  39  (xvii,  24,  26,  30)  belong 
to  the  Synoptic  Apocalypse,  and  xxix,  44  (xii,  46)  is  a  later 
gloss,  as  Juelicher1  has  recognized.  Among  the  five  pas- 
sages found  in  Matth.  and  Mark,  Matth.  xvii,  9  (ix,  8)  refers 
to  the  vision  of  the  shining  heavenly  body  of  Jesus,  evidently 
an  anticipation  of  some  vision  confirming  the  belief  in  his 
resurrection.  The  Elijah  question  originally  seems  to  have 
had  no  connection  with  the  transfiguration.  The  text  in 
Mark  ix,  11-13  is  late  and  confused;  that  in  Matth.  xvii, 
10-13  may  go  back  to  an  Aramaic  original,  "Thus  must  a 
man  (bar  nash)  suffer  by  them,"  referring  to  John  the 
Baptist.  Matth.  xx,  28  (x,  45)  is  probably  a  comment  by 
the  evangelist  on  the  exemplification  in  the  life  and  death  of 
Jesus  of  the  principle  laid  down  by  him.2  Luke  xxii,  27-30 
contains  a  curious  misunderstanding  of  the  thought  J^sus 
wished  to  convey.  Matth.  xxvi,  24b  (xiv,  21b)  occurs  in  an 
interpolation  that  breaks  the  connection,  and  is  probably 
without  historic  foundation.  The  phrase  occurs  in  Matth. 
xxvi,  45  (xiv,  41),  but  the  connection  is  far  better  in  Luke 
where  it  does  not  appear.  In  the  single  passage  found  only 
in  Mark  and  Luke  (viii,  31  and  ix,  22)  Jesus  announces  his 
death  and  resurrection  on  the  third  day  immediately  after 
Peter's  confession.  Of  this  Matthew  knew  nothing.  He 
refers  to  the  sufferings  of  the  son  of  man  for  the  first  time 

1  Gleichnisreden  Jesu,  1899,  II,  142  ff. 

aThe  suggestion  that  this  too  might  go  back  to  a  genuine  saying 
to  the  effect  that  "man  (fear  nashd)  does  not  come  (into  the  world) 
to  be  served,  but  to  serve, ' '  should  probably  be  withdrawn. 


THE  SON  OF  MAN  125 


in  xvii,  12  (Mk  ix,  12),  where  the  allusion  seems  to  have 
been  to  John  the  Baptist,  as  stated  above. 

Among  the  eight  passages  found  in  all  the  Synoptics 
Matth.  ix,  6  (ii,  10,  v,  24)  and  xii,  8  (ii,  28,  vi,  5)  probably 
go  back  to  original  utterances.  Matth.  xvi,  27  (viii,  38,  ix, 
26)  is  a  late  addition,  still  further  transformed  by  the  other 
evangelists.  As  for  the  predictions  of  his  death  and  resur- 
rection in  Matth.  xvii,  22  (ix,  31,  ix,  44)  and  xx,  18  (x,  33, 
xviii,  31),  the  latter  furnishes  the  most  natural  situation. 
The  difficulty  of  suppressing  the  political  hopes  of  his  fol- 
lowers, and  the  opposition  he  was  sure  to  encounter  in  Jeru- 
salem may  well  have  filled  his  mind  with  evil  forebodings. 
But  he  believed  in  a  resurrection  from  the  dead  for  those 
that  should  be  accounted  worthy  of  this  privilege.  It  is 
therefore  possible  that  he  encouraged  his  disciples  and  him- 
self with  some  such  a  remark  as  that  "man  must  pass  away, 
but  he  may  rise  again,"  or  "a  man  may  be  delivered  into 
the  hands  of  men  and  be  put  to  death,  yet  he  may  rise 
again."  Matth.  xxvii,  30b  (xiii,  26,  xxi,  27)  belongs  to  the 
Synoptic  Apocalypse  or  The  Wisdom  of  God.  In  this  work 
it  is  altogether  probable  that  ' '  a  man ' '  was  first  introduced 
and  that  subsequently  there  were  references  to  "the  man" 
in  the  same  manner  as  in  Enoch  xxxvii-lxxi  and  Fourth 
Ezra.  In  Matth.  xxvi,  64  Jesus  answers  the  question 
whether  he  is  the  Messiah,  "Thou  sayest  it/'  in  Luke  xxii, 
69  "Ye  say  that  I  am."  The  meaning  is  unmistakably, 
"Ye  say  that  I  am  the  Messiah,  but  I  have  made  no  such 
statement."  These  evangelists  are  not  willing  to  put  upon 
the  lips  of  Jesus  an  affirmative  answer  even  under  oath. 
Nothing  could  more  clearly  show  how  deeply  they  were 
under  the  influence  of  the  theory  that  Jesus  maintained  to 
the  end  his  incognito,  refusing  to  make  known  his  Messianic 
secret.  Mark  xiv,  62  departs  widely  from  this  earlier  tradi- 
tion by  making  Jesus  admit  his  Messiahship.  A  critical 
study  of  the  narrative  renders  it  exceedingly  difficult  to 
believe  in  the  historical  character  of  the  account  of  the  trial 
before  the  Sanhedrin.  Matth.  xxvi,  24a  (xiv,  21a,  xxii,  22) 
belongs  to  an  interpolation  already  mentioned, 


126  THE  PROPHET  OF  NAZAEETH 

When  these  passages  are  closely  examined,  some  facts  be- 
come very  apparent.  The  evidence  that  Jesus  used  the 
term,  or  an  equivalent,  on  this  or  that  occasion  is  far  from 
being  positive  and  abundant.  In  most  instances  it  is  ex- 
ceedingly precarious.  When  one  evangelist  affirms  that  he 
employed  it,  and  the  others  affirm  that  he  said  "the  kingdom 
of  God/7  or  "the  kingdom  of  heaven"  or  "I,"  all  cannot  be 
right,  and  the  critic  must  decide  on  inner  grounds  which 
evangelist  comes  nearest  to  recording  the  actual  fact,  or 
whether  any  of  them  can  be  trusted.  When  it  occurs,  as  is 
frequently  the  case,  in  additions  made  by  a  single  evangelist 
to  a  common  report,  even  scholars  who  strongly  maintain  its 
use  by  Jesus  feel  little  confidence.  Even  when  all  the 
Synoptics  repeatedly  assign  to  Jesus  a  statement  containing 
it,  like  the  prediction  of  death  and  resurrection,  the  evidence 
can  scarcely  be  regarded  as  abundant,  seeing  that  the  gospels 
themselves  represent  the  disciples  as  absolutely  unprepared 
for  the  resurrection,  and  the  risen  Jesus  as  rebuking  them, 
not  for  failing  to  believe  his  own  prediction,  but  for  not 
understanding  the  prophecies  of  the  Old  Testament.  If 
testimonies  are  to  be  weighed  as  well  as  counted— and  in 
matters  of  such  gravity  it  would  be  inexcusable  not  to  weigh 
them,— it  must  be  admitted  that  the  great  majority  of  the 
passages  that  put  the  phrase  upon  the  lips  of  Jesus  fall  very 
lightly  in  the  scales.  Suspicion  would  attach  to  them  all, 
were  it  not  that  sound  historical  criticism  demands,  as  a 
matter  of  course,  that  any  saying  of  Jesus  reported  in  a 
Greek  text  be  translated  back  into  the  Aramaic  vernacular 
before  a  final  verdict  be  given.  It  then  happens  that  just  the 
passages  which  critics  who  never  thought  of  this  necessity  on 
independent  grounds  were  most  inclined  to  accept  as 
genuine  reveal  a  sense  at  once  so  natural  and  so  strikingly 
original  as  to  furnish  what,  in  comparison  with  the  "mere 
conjecture"  of  all  speculations,  however  necessary,  based 
only  on  the  uncertain  Greek  renderings,  may  justly  be  re- 
garded as  ' '  positive  and  abundant  evidence. "  It  is  also  of 
interest  for  the  Synoptic  problem  to  observe  that  among  the 
passages  occurring  in  more  than  one  gospel  there  are  some  in 


THE  SON  OF  MAN  127 


Matthew  and  Luke,  not  found  in  Mark,  that  may  go  back  to 
original  sayings  of  Jesus:  that  the  only  passage  found  in 
Mark  and  Luke,  but  not  in  Matthew,  cannot  be  regarded  as 
genuine;  that  there  is  no  authentic  saying  preserved  in 
Luke,  that  is  not  also  found  in  Matthew ;  that  there  are  pas- 
sages in  Mark,  as  well  as  in  Matthew  and  Luke,  that  are 
clearly  of  very  late  origin;  and  that  there  are  passages  in 
Mark,  as  well  as  in  Matthew  and  Luke,  in  which  the  phrase 
may  go  back  to  an  original  bar  nasha  even  after  the  episode 
at  Caesarea  Philippi1 

There  is  a  false  impression  in  many  circles  as  to  the  diffi- 
culty of  finding  the  phrase  in  the  Galilean  dialect  of  the 
Aramaic  which  is  likely  to  have  been  used  by  Jesus  in  those 
genuine  utterances  where  the  Greek  translation,  "the  Son 
of  Man,"  occurs.  It  is  true  that  the  literary  material  of 
this  dialect  apparently  does  not  carry  us  further  back  than 
to  the  second  century  A.  D.  But  the  translation  in  this 
case  is  simplified  by  the  fact  that  the  Greek  term  can  only  be 
the  rendering  of  a  form  compounded  with  bar,  "son,"  and 
by  the  circumstance  that  of  terms  that  may  be  considered 
bereh  de-'nasha,  her  eh  de-gabra,  and  bereh  de-bar  'nasha 
must  be  eliminated.  All  of  these  are  manifestly  Christian 
renderings  of  the  Greek  term.  Bereh  de-'nasha  has  no 
natural  meaning  in  Aramaic.  An  individual  of  the  human 
species  is  called  bar  'nasha,  literally  '  *  son  of  men, "  "  mem- 
ber of  the  human  race. ' '  As  the  appended  article  gradually 
tends  to  lose  its  force,  an  anticipatory  pronominal  suffix  is 
attached  to  the  first  noun,  if  the  emphasis  is  to  fall,  lightly 
or  heavily,  on  the  second.  Thus  bereh  de-gabra  would  mean, 
"son  of  him,  viz.,  of  the  man,"  son  of  the  particular  man 
referred  to  before.  Bereh  de-'nasha  would  mean  "son  of  it, 
viz.,  of  the  human  race "  or  "  son  of  the  well-known  human 
being."  As  a  matter  of  fact,  it  never  occurs  except  as  a 
rendering  of  the  Greek  title,  or  what  is  supposed  by  Chris- 

1  The  manifest  tendency  of  these  facts  is  to  strengthen  the  observa- 
tion made  long  ago  by  Hilgenfeld  that  in  spite  of  its  numerous  and 
extensive  later  additions  the  first  gospel  is  likely  to  be  the  earliest  of 
our  Synoptics.  See  further  Ch.  ix. 


128  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZABETH 

tian  writers  to  be  its  equivalent.  It  is  not  a  natural  product 
of  the  language,  but  an  artificial  creation.  It  seems  to  have 
gradually  crowded  out  the  earlier  bereh  de-gabra,  found  in  a 
number  of  passages  in  the  Sinaitic  and  Curetonian,1  and 
won  final  recognition  in  the  fifth  century  in  the  Syriac  Vul- 
gate. Its  absence  in  the  Evangeliarium  Hierosolymitanum 
probably  shows  that  it  never  prevailed  among  the  Christians 
in  Palestine.  The  objection  to  the  earlier  translation  her  eh 
de-gabra  (literally  "son  of  him  viz.,  of  the  man")  was  prob- 
ably that  "the  man,"  "the  masculine  human  being"  seemed 
to  point  to  Joseph.  Bereh  de-bar  'nasha  (literally  "the  son 
of  him,  i.  e.j  of  the  son  of  man"  or  "the  son  of  the  individual 
of  the  human  species")  only  shows  how  completely  identical 
"man"  and  "son  of  man"  were  in  some  connections,  and 
how  in  some  sayings  gabra  was  avoided.  The  only  available 
term  is  bar  'nasha.  From  the  second  century  A.  D.  on  it 
was  used  more  freely  in  Galilean  works  than  in  the 
Judaean  Targums,  though  Dan.  vii,  13  best  shows  how  well 
established  its  usage  was  even  in  this  dialect.  That  the 
generic  use  of  bar  'nasha  was  unknown  in  Galilee  only  three 
generations  before  its  first  appearance  in  extant  literature, 
is  absolutely  contrary  to  all  probability.  In  translating 
long  sentences  back  into  the  original  there  is  always  consid- 
erable risk.  Where  the  question  is  only  of  a  word,  and 
there  is  practically  no  choice  as  here,  the  margin  of  error  is 
exceedingly  small. 

Fiebig2  has  carefully  examined  both  Talmuds,  and  much 
material  besides,  with  the  result  that  the  philological  con- 
clusions on  which  the  theory  rests  have  been  thoroughly  cor- 
roborated. The  work  is  of  value,  as  some  scholars  had 
imagined  that  a  radically  different  usage  might  be  found  in 
the  parts  of  the  Talmuds  not  yet  examined  for  this  purpose. 
Fiebig 's  conclusions  will  perhaps  have  all  the  more  weight 
with  cautious  students,  as  he  still  clings  to  the  idea  that 
Jesus  used  the  phrase  as  a  mystifying  title,  and  therefore 

lLuTce  vii,  34  (Sin.,  Cur.);  Mark,  viii,  38  (Sin.  [Ev.]);  Luke  ix, 
26  (Cur.)  ;  Luke,  xxii,  48  (Cur.)  ;  John,  xiii,  31  (Sin.  [Ev.]). 
*Der  Menschensohn,  Jesv,  Selb$tbe0eichnung,  1901, 


THE  SON  OF  MAN  129 


cannot  be  suspected  of  an  undue  bias.  He  acknowledges 
the  essential  accuracy  of  the  observations  made  by  the  pres- 
ent writer  on  the  question  of  the  meaning  of  bar  nasha, 
though  he  thinks  that  the  treatment  was  too  brief  to  allow 
a  real  insight  into  the  facts.1  That  depends  upon  the  eyes. 
To  persons  thoroughly  familiar  with  Aramaic  speech  it  was 
more  than  enough.  Whether  others  will  be  convinced  even 
by  Fiebig's  lexical  studies  of  the  Talmud,  or  my  own  con- 
tributions to  the  concordance  of  the  Syriac  Versions,2  when 
the  consequences  are  in  full  view,  the  future  will  show. 
Fiebig  himself  seeks  in  vain  to  avoid  these  consequences  by 
the  assumption  that  the  phrase  was  used  by  Jesus  in  an  am- 
biguous manner  so  that  the  hearers  might  believe  that  he 
was  speaking  of  man  in  general  or  of  "the  man"  i.  e.,  the 
Messiah  as  a  third  person,  though  in  reality  he  was  speaking 
of  himself.  Jesus  must  then  have  been  willing  to  have  his 
hearers  infer  that  he  cherished  such  bold  and  original  ideas 
at  that  man  for  whose  sake  the  sabbath  was  made  was  also 
lord  of  the  sabbath,  and  that  any  man,  not  merely  a  priest, 
had  the  right  to  proclaim  the  pardon  of  sin.  Yet  it  is  sup- 
posed that  in  his  heart  he  cherished  the  narrower  and  less 
logical  conception  that  he  alone,  as  the  Messiah,  was  lord  of 
the  sabbath,  and  had  the  right  to  pardon  sin.  If  he  was 
capable  of  the  former,  why  ascribe  to  him  the  latter? 
There  is  more  than  ambiguity  of  speech  in  this;  there  is 
duplicity  of  character.  Is  there  any  good  reason  why  his 
character  should  thus  be  sacrificed  for  the  sake  of  preserv- 
ing his  claim  to  Messiahship?  And  is  there  the  slightest 
ground  for  supposing  that  "the  Man"  was  understood  even 
in  esoteric  circles  as  the  Messiah?  Designations  like  "the 
Chosen  One,"  "the  Just  One,"  "the  Restorer,"  "the  Bride- 
groom," "the  Lamb,"  suggest  character  or  function,  and 
are  therefore  intelligible;3  "the  Man  on  the  Clouds"  would 

1 1.  c.,  p.  59. 

2  In  the  article  Son  of  Man  in  Encyclopaedia  Biblica. 

•This  fact  is  not  fully  appreciated  by  Bousset,  Die  Religion  des 
Judentums,  1903,  p.  254.  But  it  is  characteristic  of  the  present  sit- 
uation that  he  does  not  dare  to  affirm  that  Jesus  used  the  term  Son 
9 


130  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZAEETH 

point  to  Daniel  vii,  13,  and  names  signifying  this,  like  'anani 
or  bar  nefele,  were  formed.  But  it  is  not  probable  that 
either  in  Babylonian  mythology  or  in  Jewish  apocalyptic 
speculation  an  important  personage  was  referred  to  simply 
as  1 1  the  man, ' '  * '  the  human  being. ' ' 

Driver1  suggests  as  a  possibility  that  Jesus  employed  the 
term  bereh  de-'nasha,  since  bar  'nasha  is  likely  to  have  been 
commonly  used  in  the  sense  of  man  in  general.  But  he 
labors  under  a  wrong  impression  in  regard  to  the  use  of  this 
title.  He  thinks  that  it  is  always  used  in  the  Sinaitic  and 
Curetonian  Syriac.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  even  in  their  pres- 
ent fragmentary  condition,  both  of  these  texts  exhibit  the 
rendering  bereh  de-gabra  in  several  passages.2  It  is  also  of 
importance  that  bereh  de-'nasha  is  never  used  in  the  so- 
called  Jerusalem  Leetionary,  which  is  the  only  Aramaic  ver- 
sion of  the  New  Testament  likely  to  have  been  made  in 
Palestine.  What  phrase  the  lost  Gospel  of  the  Hebrews 
contained  cannot  be  determined  by  Jerome 's  Latin  quota- 
tion, the  text  of  which  is  itself  uncertain,  and  the  character 
of  the  book  he  had  before  him  is  very  problematic.  The  dis- 
tinguished Hebraist  finally  gives  a  qualified  approval  to 
Sanday's  theory,  that  Jesus,  who  ordinarily  spoke  Aramaic, 
may  have  introduced  the  mystic  title  upon  some  occasions 
when  he  addressed  his  Galilean  disciples  in — Greek.  It  is 
not  clear  whether  Driver  would  credit  Jesus  with  having 
originated  the  remarkable  Greek  phrase.  Until  some  new 
facts,  or  arguments  not  long  ago  considered  and  disposed  of, 
shall  be  presented,  to  prove  that  Jesus  regularly  or  occasion- 
ally addressed  the  fishermen  of  Galilee  in  Greek,  it  is  to  be 
hoped  that  earnest  students  will  not  be  diverted  from  the 
path  where  duty  lies,  and  great  rewards  for  labor  are  in 

of  Man.  He  admits  freely  that  "Jesus  did  not  use  the  title  as  a  con- 
stantly repeated  self  -designation. "  and  only  cautiously  ventures  to 
state  that  "it  is  not  altogether  impossible  that  Jesus  may  have  some 
time  used  it. ' ' 

1  Article  "Son  of  Man,"  in  Hastings'  Bible  Dictionary. 

2  See  p.  128. 


THE  SON  OF  MAN  131 


sight,  by  the  spell  of  influential  names.1  Our  manifest  duty 
is  to  turn  every  purported  saying  of  Jesus  into  Galilean 
Aramaic  that  we  may  test  in  his  own  vernacular  the  trans- 
lations we  may  be  fortunate  enough  to  possess.  Our 
precious  reward  consists  in  coming  nearer  to  the  spirit  of 
Jesus,  and  of  obtaining  more  abundant  evidence  of  his 
transcendent  personality.  Menzies  (Hibbert  Journal,  Oct., 
1903,  p.  187)  objects:  "If  Jesus  made  no  Messianic  claim 
and  was  a  teacher  of  humanitarian  doctrine,  conscious  of  no 
special  religious  position,  how  is  the  opposition  of  his  fellow- 
countrymen,  and  how  is  the  crucifixion  to  be  accounted 
for?"  Unless  it  can  be  proved  that  Jesus  could  have  used 
bar  nasha  as  a  Messianic  title  referring  to  himself,  there  is 
no  evidence  that  he  claimed  to  be  the  Messiah.  He  certainly 
was  a  teacher  of  righteousness  and  love.  He  classed  himself 
with  the  prophets  and  consequently  must  have  been  con- 
scious of  a  special  religious  position.  Jerusalem  had  killed 
her  prophets  before  his  time.  His  opposition  to  the  leading 
parties,  his  peculiar  ethical  teaching  and  his  life  explain  the 
opposition  of  his  enemies.  His  crucifixion  is  accounted  for 
by  the  false  testimony  borne  against  him  and  the  political 
interests  of  Pontius  Pilate 

The  following  conclusions  would  then  seem  justifiable. 
In  a  number  of  pregnant  utterances  Jesus  expressed  his 

1  If  new  evidence  on  this  point  should  be  furnished  by  the  eminent 
Oxford  divines,  it  would  of  course  become  the  duty  of  scholars  seri- 
ously to  consider  it.  If  they  have  really  discovered  fresh  proofs,  or 
hitherto  unnoticed  considerations,  tending  to  show  that  Jesus  now  and 
then  delivered  Greek  addresses  to  his  Aramaic  speaking  countrymen, 
a  statement  of  these  facts  in  connection  with  the  conjecture  would 
have  been  very  welcome.  If,  furthermore,  these  discoveries,  which 
Sanday  and  Driver  owe  it  to  themselves  to  communicate  to  the  world, 
should  actually  prove  that  the  sayings  above  considered  as  genuine 
were  first  uttered  in  these  Greek  speeches  of  Jesus,  the  view  to  which 
the  present  writer  has  been  forced  by  all  facts  known  to  him  would 
have  to  be  abandoned  or  greatly  modified.  But  the  manner  in  which  an 
universally  discredited  theory  has  been  suddenly  revived,  without  the 
slightest  suggestion  of  the  new  grounds  that  entitle  it  to  reconsidera- 
tion, justifies  the  suspicion  that  nothing  has  been  found  that  is  likely 
.to  affect  in  the  least  the  critical  study  of  the  gospels. 


132  TEE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZAEETH 

convictions  concerning  man's  rights,  privileges,  conditions 
and  destiny.  These  were  preserved  in  faithful  memory  by 
the  disciples  who  had  heard  them,  and  hoped  that  God  would 
bring  back  to  them  on  the  clouds  of  heaven  his  holy  servant, 
their  beloved  teacher.  In  course  of  time  they  were  probably 
also  committed  to  writing  in  the  Aramaic  language.  The 
destruction  of  Jerusalem  naturally  gave  a  strong  impetus  to 
Messianic  hopes,  both  among  those  who  expected  the  return 
of  Jesus  as  the  Messiah,  and  among  those  who  looked  for  a 
genuine  son  of  David.  Old  prophecies  were  scanned;  new 
prophecies  were  written.  The  passage  in  Daniel  where  the 
kingdom  was  promised  to  the  saints  also  spoke  of  a  celestial 
being  who  would  receive  it.  Much  thought  was  given  to 
this  heavenly  personality.  His  identity  was  not  clearly  dis- 
closed. He  might  be  Michael,  or  Enoch;  he  might  also  be 
the  true  descendant  of  David  caught  up  to  heaven  to  be  in 
readiness  for  the  appointed  time,  or  the  translated  prophet 
of  Nazareth.  In  Fourth  Ezra,  Enoch  xxxvii-lxxi,  and  the 
original  form  of  the  Synoptic  Apocalypse,  a  man  is  intro- 
duced who  is  clearly  none  else  than  the  celestial  being  in 
Dan.  vii,  13,  and  is  generally  identified  with  the  Messiah, 
though  sometimes  understood  to  be  Enoch,  and  probably  at 
times  Michael.  He  does  not  figure  yet  in  the  Book  of  Keve- 
lation.  But  disciples  of  Jesus  were  aware  that  he  had 
foretold  the  destruction  of  state  and  cult,  although  not  in 
the  form  familiar  to  us  with  its  apocalyptic  accretions  to  his 
prophetic  warnings.  The  time  came  when  an  apocalyptic 
work,  predicting  .what  had  come  upon  Jerusalem  for  the 
murder  of  her  prophets  and  righteous  men,  like  Zechariah 
ben  Barachiah,  during  the  siege  of  the  city,  and  foretelling 
the  coming  on  the  clouds  of  heaven  of  the  man  seen  in  Dan- 
iel's vision,  was  ascribed  to  Jesus  himself.  It  is  possible 
that  it  was  translated  into  Greek  under  the  title,  "The  Wis- 
dom of  God."  The  references  in  this  apocalypse  to  a  man 
coming  on  the  clouds  would  naturally  be  understood  as  pre- 
dictions by  Jesus  himself  of  his  second  advent.  Meanwhile 
Hellenistic  Jews  who  had  been  attracted  by  the  gospel  were 
influenced  in  increasing  measure  by  Gnostic  speculation. 


THE  SON  OF  MAN  133 


This  was  itself  the  result  of  a  fusion  of  Indian  thought  and 
Greek  philosophy.  Among  the  Indian  ideas  that  seem  to 
have  entered  into  this  composite  faith,  there  was  the  concep- 
tion of  the  Naravana,  "the  one  like  a  man/'  "the  son  of 
man, ' '  a  term  designating  the  Purusha,  or  macrocosmic  man. 
A  distinction  is  made  in  the  Eig  Veda1  between  the  Purusha 
as  the  absolute  being,  and  Purusha  as  the  first  born.  To  the 
latter  the  name  "son  of  man"  was  given.2  A  reflection  of 
this  idea  is  found  in  the  "man"  and  the  "son  of  man"  in 
the  system  of  the  Christian  Gnostics,  who,  according  to 
Irenaeus,  called  the  primeval  light,  the  father  of  all  things, 
primus  homo,  "the  first  man,"  and  the  first  thought  eman- 
ating from  him  secundus  homo,  "the  second  man,"  or  filius 
hominis, l '  the  son  of  man. "  It  is  probable  that  this  specu- 
lation merged  with  the  idea  of  the  ' '  son  of  man ' '  in  Daniel. 
When  at  the  end  of  the  first  century  our  first  two  gospels 
were  written  in  Greek,  these  ideas  were  floating  in  the  air. 
The  little  apocalypse  was  incorporated  in  part  in  the  two 
gospels,  as  later  in  the  third,  and  the  significance  of  the 
Greek  term  used  in  this  document  as  a  rendering  of  bar 
'nasha  ("the  man")  referring  back  to  an  initial  bar  'nash 
("a  man"),  naturally  attached  itself  to  passages  elsewhere 
containing  the  same  term  as  a  translation  of  the  generic  bar 
'nasha.  Some  old -say  ings  were  thus  revealed  in  a  new  and 
more  congenial  light.  It  was  not  man,  but  the  Christ  who 
was  the  lord  of  the  sabbath.  It  was  not  a  human  privilege, 
but  a  Messianic  prerogative,  to  pardon  sin.  It  was  not 
man's  common  lot,  but  his  own  unnatural  humiliation,  that 
Jesus  had  described.  It  was  not  sins  of  man  against  man 
that  Jesus  had  declared  to  be  pardonable,  but  he  had 
graciously  proclaimed  forgiveness  even  for  sins  against  the 
Christ.  It  was  not  man's  immediate  resurrection  from  the 
dead  that  he  had  announced,  but  exclusively  his  own  resur- 
rection that  he  had  foretold. 

Thus  the  Aramaic  expression,  by  which  Jesus  not  only 

1 X,  90. 

aCf.  Grill,  Untersuchungen  uber  die  Entstehung  des  vierten  Evan- 
geliums,  1902,  p.  348  ff. 


134:  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZAEETH 

cannot  have  conveyed  any  explicit  or  implied  claims  to  the 
Messiahship,  but  actually  seems  to  have  given  utterance  to 
far  more  original  and  comprehensive  views  of  life,  became 
by  a  natural  development  a  Messianic  title.  That  it  may 
have  been  understood  in  this  latter  sense  by  the  writers  of 
our  gospels  everywhere,  is  a  correct  observation  of  many 
scholars.  Yet  there  were  elements  of  truth  in  both  the 
"emphatically  high"  conception  of  Herder  and  the  "em- 
phatically low"  estimate  of  Baur.  The  Synoptists  had 
their  ideal  as  well  as  the  Fourth  Evangelist.  What  the 
Logos  was  to  the  latter,  the  Danielic  "son  of  man"  was  to 
the  former.1  On  the  other  hand,  an  underlying  stratum  of 
facts  was  divined  by  those  who  found  here  and  there  in  the 
phrase  an  expression  of  the  universal  human  sympathies  of 
Jesus.  It  was  also  a  correct  feeling  that  led  to  the  affirma- 
tion that  to  the  end  Jesus  preached  the  kingdom  of  heaven, 
and  not  himself.  But  for  a  positive  knowledge  of  the  life 
of  Jesus  no  line  of  investigation  has  been  more  fruitful  than 
that  which,  based  on  sound  philology,  has  demonstrated  that 
Jesus  cannot  have  called  himself  l  ( the  Son  of  Man. ' ' 

1  An  examination  of  the  meaning  attached  to  the  term  ( '  Son  of 
Man"  by  the  Fourth  Evangelist  is  not  essential  for  our  present  pur- 
pose, as  it  can  throw  no  light  upon  its  possible  use  by  Jesus  (See  Ch. 
xi).  But  it  may  be  noticed  that  Fries  (Det  fjdrde  evangeliet,  1898), 
who  regards  the  gospel  as  originally  written  by  the  presbyter  John 
and  afterwards  expanded  by  the  Gnostic  Cerinthus,  attributes  practi- 
cally all  the  "Son  of  Man"  passages  to  the  latter;  and  that  Kreyen- 
biihl  (Das  Evangelium  der  Wahrheit,  1900),  who  considers  Menander 
of  Kapparetaea  as  its  author,  looks  upon  "Son  of  Man"  in  the 
gospel  not  as  an  exclusive  self -designation  of  Jesus,  but  as  a  term 
applying  to  "man,"  "any  man/'  jeder  Christenmensch."  The 
Gnostic  affinities  of  the  gospel  can  scarcely  be  questioned,  but  Gril] 
(1.  c.)  is  right  in  tracing  to  Indian  sources  the  conception  of  an  in- 
carnation of  a  divine  being  as  "the  Son  of  Man,"  and  Jean  Eeville 
(Le  quatrieme  Evangile,  1901)  rightly  emphasizes  the  paramount  in- 
fluence of  Philo's  thought. 


CHAPTER  VI 
THE  SON  OF  GOD 

To  generation  after  generation  of  Christian  believers 
such  expressions  as  "the  Son  of  God,"  or  "the  Son," 
when  found  in  the  New  Testament,  naturally  conveyed  the 
same  meaning  as  they  had  in  the  constantly  repeated 
creeds.  They  were  understood  as  designating  the  second 
person  in  the  Holy  Trinity,  and  more  particularly  his  di- 
vine nature  as  distinguished  from  his  human  nature 
assumed  in  the  incarnation.  They  were  regarded  as 
indicative  of  the  fact  that  Jesus  was  not  begotten  of  a 
human  father,  but  conceived  of  the  Holy  Ghost.  These 
names  were  freely  given  to  Jesus  in  epistles  considered 
to  be  of  apostolic  origin.  According  to  the  Gospel  of 
John,  they  were  frequently  assumed  by  himself,  and  ac- 
cording to  the  Synoptics  they  were  used  by  him  as  a  self- 
designation  on  some  important  occasions.  More  than 
once  God  the  Father  proclaimed  with  an  audible  voice 
from  heaven  his  divine  sonship.  And  the  demons  them- 
selves, when  they  tremblingly  acknowledged  his  author- 
ity, addressed  him  as  the  "Son  of  God."  The  impression, 
therefore,  was  well-nigh  unavoidable  that  to  be  the  Christ 
was  the  same  as  to  be  the  Son  of  God,  and  to  be  the  Son 
of  God  was  to  be  God  the  Son.  Some  men  were  no  doubt 
called  in  Scripture  "children  of  God,"  or  "sons  of  God." 
But  such  a  title,  it  was  felt,  must  be  taken  as  a  figure  of 
speech,  applicable  only  in  a  secondary  and  derived  sense. 
Even  those  who  by  faith  were  said  to  become  the 
"adopted  children  of  God,"  or  "partakers  of  the  divine 
nature"  could  not  be  thought  of  as  real  sons  of  God. 
While  in  his  case  the  title  implied  deity,  absolute  identity 
of  nature  with  the  Father,  in  theirs  it  could  only  suggest  a 

135 


136  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZABETH 

new  position  as  men  redeemed  from  the  power  and  pen- 
alty of  sin  and  brought  into  living  relations  with  the  Son 
of  God,  a  humanity  transformed  into  moral  likeness  to 
God. 

This  conception  of  the  Son  of  God  could  be  maintained 
only  where  the  ecumenic  creeds  were  regarded  as  authori- 
tative or  the  Bible,  from  force  of  habit  and  lack  of  proper 
methods  of  study,  was  interpreted  in  the  light  of  these 
creeds.  Wherever  reverence  for  the  Scriptures,  sincere 
piety,  and  personal  devotion  to  the  Christ  fostered  inde- 
pendence of  the  Church  and  distrust  of  her  creeds  and  insti- 
tutions, there  was  a  decided  tendency  to  adopt  anti-trinita- 
rian  views.  Whether  or  not  a  historic  connection  can  be 
traced  between  such  religious  societies  as  the  Passagii,  the 
Paulicians  and  the  Patarenes1  on  the  one  hand,  tke  Ebi- 
onites,  the  Marcionites,  the  Theodotians,  the  Noetians,  the 
Paulianists  and  the  Sabellians  on  the  other,  the  direct 
resort  to  the  New  Testament  with  its  different  types  of 
Christology  naturally  revived  many  an  opinion  con- 
demned by  the  majority  in  the  days  of  the  upbuilding  of 
dogma.  The  distinction  made  by  men  like  Elipandus  of 
Toledo,  Felix  of  Urgel,  and  Claude  of  Turin  between  the 
eternal  Son  of  God  and  Jesus  as  the  adopted  son  of  God 
tended  to  place  the  historic  Jesus  upon  the  same  plane  as 
other  men  who  were  also  regarded  as  adopted  sons  of 
God.  Among  the  Beghards,  the  Brethren  of  the  Free 
Spirit,  the  Lollards,  the  Albigenses,  the  Waldenses,  and 
the  Brethren  of  the  United  Life  there  were  many  who 
questioned  the  view  presented  by  the  creeds. 

But  it  was  among  the  Baptists  of  the  sixteenth  century 
that  freedom  from  dogma,  a  reverent  and  yet  critical 
study  of  the  Bible,  personal  loyalty  to  Jesus  and  a  high 
conception  of  the  worth  of  human  nature,  led  to  the  com- 
plete rejection  of  the  trinitarian  idea  of  the  term  "Son 

1  There  is  no  good  reason  for  doubting  the  substantial  accuracy  of 
the  story  concerning  Gerard  of  Asti  told  by  Ludolph  Senior,  Historia 
Mediolani,  II,  27,  quoted  by  CSsare  Cantu,  Gli  Eretici  d'  Italia  1867, 
p.  129. 


THE  SON  OF  GOB  137 


of  God."  This  is  the  attitude  of  Hans  Denck,  Ludwig 
Haetzer,1  Jakob  Kautz,  Michael  Sattler  and  many  of  the 
Swiss  churches,  as  well  as  of  Tiziano,  Francesco  Negri, 
Celio  Secundo  Curione,  Camillo  Renato  and  the  majority 
of  the  Italian  churches  in  1550.2  While  they  maintained 
that  Jesus  was  not  God  but  a  man  born  of  Joseph  and 
Mary,3  a  son  of  God  only  in  the  ethical  sense  in  which 
this  title  may  be  applied  to  other  men,  and  a  saviour  in  so 
far  as  men  may  be  morally  helped  by  his  example  and 
spirit,  other  leaders  of  this  radical  party  in  the  Reforma- 
tion era  still  adhered  to  the  doctrine  that  Jesus  had  no 
human  father,  and  saw  in  his  miraculous  birth  the  justi- 
fication of  the  title  Son  of  God,  but  insisted  that  this 
natural  son  of  God  was  a  man,  though  the  term  "god" 
might  also  be  applied  to  him,  if  taken  in  a  generic  sense. 
In  this  manner  the  term  was  explained  by  Martin  Cel- 
larius,4  Michael  Servetus,  Rudolph  Martini,  Claude  of 
Savoy,  and  apparently  also  by  Lelio  Sozzini,5  Francesco 
della  Segga,  Giulio  Gherlandi,  Paolo  Alziati,  Antonio  Riz- 
zetto,  Giorgio  Biandrata,  Matteo  Gribaldo  and  Valentino 

1  It  was  only  after  his  contact  with  Denck  in  Strasburg  (summer 
1526)  that  Haetzer  began  to  deny  the  deity  of  Jesus,  as  Keim  has 
shown,  Jahrbucher  fur  Deutsche  Theologie  I,  1856,  p.  265  ff.  Already 
Heberle  recognized  that  Denck  and  Haetzer  had  not  been  together  in 
Niirnberg  before  1527,  when  Schlaffer  visited  them  there,  Theologische 
Studien  und  Kritiken,  1855,  p.  871.  This  is  of  some  importance,  as 
it  shows  the  source  of  Haetzer 's  radicalism,  which,  however,  never 
touched  the  roots  of  thought  laid  bare  by  Denck 's  penetrating  intel- 
lect, and  lacked  his  balance  of  judgment  and  sweetness  of  temper. 

*  See  Archivo  di  Stato,  Sant '  Uffizio,  busta  9,  found  by  Benrath 
(Studien  und  Kritiken,  1885,  p.  20),  published  by  Comba,  Eevista 
Christiana,  1885,  described  by  Comba,  I  nostri  protestanti,  1897,  II, 
488  ff. 

8  According  to  Manelfi  's  account,  of  which  a  copy  is  preserved  in 
the  State  Archive  at  Venice  (see  the  preceding  note),  Tiziano  main- 
tained that  Matth.,  i  and  ii,  were  later  interpolations. 

4  The  conception  of  Elohim  (God)  as  a  generic  name  and  that  of 
Jesus  as  a  "natural  son,"  afterwards  characteristic  of  Servetus Js 
theology,  were  already  expressed  by  Cellarius  in  1527. 

6  See  Excursus  B. 


138  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZAEETH 

Gentile,1  while  Melchior  Hofmann  and  his  numerous  fol- 
lowers declared  that  Jesus  as  the  Son  of  God  did  not  de- 
rive his  flesh  from  Mary,  and  David  Joris  seems  to  have 
used  the  term  simply  as  a  symbol  of  the  Christian  dispen- 
sation. In  respect  of  Biblical  exegesis  not  less  than  theo- 
logical speculation  the  contributions  of  Denck  and  Serve- 
tus  were  unquestionably  the  most  important.  In  his  trans- 
lation of  the  Prophets  and  his  occasional  explanatory  glosses, 
Denck  unmistakably  shows  that  he  discounts  a  consider- 
able number  of  the  supposed  Messianic  prophecies.2  Of 
great  significance  is  a  pregnant  passage  in  his  treatise 
Concerning  True  Love.  " Flesh  and  blood/'  he  says, 
" would  not  understand  God's  love  for  men,  were  it  not 
particularly  manifested  in  some  men  whom  people  call 
divine  men  or  children  of  God  because  they  follow  God  as 

1  Men  like  Valdez  and  Yermigli  have  been  strongly  classed  as  anti- 
Trinitarians.  The  attitude  of  Erasmus  is  difficult  to  interpret.  He 
seems  to  have  questioned  the  personality  of  the  Holy  Ghost  and  may 
have  cherished  more  radical  opinions  than  he  cared  to  express. 

*Alle  Propheten  nach  hebraischer  sprach  verteutscht,  Hagenau, 
1528.  I  quote  my  own  copy.  In  Jer.,  xxxi,  22  b.,  Denck  translates 
* '  das  auss  eym  weib  eyn  man  wirt, ' '  which  means  ' '  that  a  woman  be- 
comes a  man."  To  Zech.,  iv,  1,  he  observes  "die  zwen  siin  des  ols 
seind  der  hohe  priester  und  der  kiinig,"  the  two  sons  of  oil  are  the 
high  priest  and  the  king."  Zech.,  ix,  9,  he  translates  "Siehe  dein 
kiinig  der  kompt  zu  dir  der  ist  der  gerecht  und  eyn  heyland,  demiitig 
und  reitet  auff  eym  esel,  ja  auff  eym  jungen  fiillin  der  eselin, "  "he 
rides  on  an  ass,  yea  on  the  colt  of  a  she-ass,"  observing  the  parallel- 
ism and  avoiding  the  absurd  "and"  of  other  versions.  To  this  pas- 
sage he  remarks  that  ' '  the  word  nosha,  Saviour,  means  in  Hebrew  one 
who  receives  help,  that  is  who  with  his  people  persists  through  the 
power  God  gives  and  overcomes  the  enemy."  Zech,,  xii,  8,  he  ren- 
ders ' '  und  das  hauss  David  wie  gotter, "  ' '  and  the  house  of  David  as 
gods. ' '  It  may  be  mentioned  that  in  Daniel,  vii,  25,  and  xii,  7,  Denck 
translatsd  "bis  auff  eyn  zeit  und  zwei  zeit  und  eyn  halbe  zeit." 
"until  one  time,  two  times  and  half  a  time,1'-'  a  rendering  not  found 
in  the  ancient  versions  nor  in  the  modern  translations  until  Houbi- 
gant,  though  "times"  was  correctly  understood  as  "two  times"  by 
Minister,  Vatble,  Piscator  and  Grotius.  "Bis  auff  eynen  gesalbten 
fiirsten."  "until  an  anointed  prince,"  Dan.,  ix,  25,  should  also  be 
mentioned.  It  is  to  be  regretted  that  Denck  did  not  supply  his  text 
with  more  annotations. 


THE  SON  OF  GOD  139 


their  spiritual  father.  The  more  clearly  this  love  is 
manifested,  the  more  clearly  it  may  be  recognized  by 
men ;  the  more  fully  it  is  recognized,  the  more  it  is  loved, 
the  nearer  is  true  blessedness.  Therefore  it  has  pleased 
the  eternal  love  that  the  man  in  whom  love  should  find 
its  highest  manifestation  should  be  called  a  bestower  of 
blessedness  to  his  people:  not  that  it  were  possible  for  a 
man  to  make  anyone  truly  blessed,  but  that  God  would  be 
so  intimately  united  with  him  in  love  that  all  God's  work 
would  be  this  man's  work,  and  all  the  suffering  of  this  man 
might  be  regarded  as  God's  suffering.  This  man  is  Jesus 
of  Nazareth."1  In  this  reverent  yet  boldly  critical  utter- 
ance Denck  adopts  the  correct  method  by  beginning  with 
such  generic  terms  as  "Gotteskinder"  and  "goettliche 
Menschen,"  then  seeking  the  real  significance  of  these 
figures  of  speech,  and  finally  estimating  the  greatness  of 
the  man  Jesus  of  Nazareth  without  any  resort  to  the  tech- 
nical terms  of  Biblical  or  ecclesiastical  usage. 

Servetus,  on  the  other  hand,  endeavored  to  retain 
the  terms  "Son  of  God"  and  "God"  as  applied  to 
Jesus  by  conceiving  of  him  as  the  natural  son  of  God 
through  a  superhuman  birth,  and  by  understanding 
God  as  a  generic  term.  It  is  of  importance,  however, 
that  in  arguing  the  wider  use  of  the  Hebrew  word  Elohim 
(God)  he  quotes  among  other  passages  Gen.  vi,  2,  say- 
ing "and  Peter  calls  those  angels  who  in  Gen.  vi,  are 
said  to  be  Elohim  or  sons  of  Elohim."2  Through 

1  Von  der  waren  ~L\eb,  1527,  p.  3  f .  In  his  treatise,  06  Gott  ein 
Ursach  des  Bosen  sei,  1526,  p.  9,  quoted  by  Koerich,  Essai  sur  la  vie 
de  DencTc,  1853,  p.  30,  he  declares  that  God  is  in  all  his  creatures  and 
continues,  "if  God  is  in  me  then  all  that  belongs  to  God  is  in  me." 
His  idea  of  the  divine  manifestation  is  not  limited  to  one  man,  and 
it  is  not  confined  to  man.  His  thought  is  pantheistic. 

aDe  trinitatis  erroribus,  1531,  p.  15.  In  the  margin  he  remarks 
"the  Aldine  edition  is  not  the  Septuagint. "  As  the  Complutensian 
and  the  Lonicer  edition  of  1526  have  the  same  reading  as  the  Aldine 
and  Servetus  cannot  have  known  either  the  Alexandrine  MS.  or  the 
minuscules  that  give  " angels "  and  not  "sons  of  God,"  he  seems  to 
have  based  his  assertion  on  the  quotation  in  the  Clementines  and 


140  THE  PBOPHET  OP  NA2AKETH 

Fausto  Sozzini1  a  conception  based  on  that  of  Servetus 
and  less  radical  than  the  view  presented  by  Denck  and 
many  of  the  early  Baptists  became  prevalent  in  Poland, 
Transylvania  and  elsewhere.  Giordono  Bruno's2  veiled 
criticism  of  the  theanthropic  conception  was  valuable  in 
so  far  as  it  tended  to  direct  attention  to  the  general  mytho- 
logical presuppositions.  This  line  of  study  was  pursued 
more  fully  by  Herbert  of  Cherbury.3  John  Toland4  and 
William  Whiston5  by  their  studies  of  the  early  Ebionitish 
form  of  Christianity  were  led  to  the  conviction  that  Jesus 
was  born  of  Joseph  and  Mary.  John  Locke6  rejected  all 
other  designations  of  Jesus  than  the  Messiah.  Some  of 
the  Pietists,  notably  Edelmann,  sympathized  with  this 
restriction.  The  emphasis  that  Edelmann7  put  upon  the 
rationality  of  the  Christian  religion  led  to  a  more  careful 
examination  of  such  terms  as  Son  of  God  and  Logos. 

The  first  important  monograph  of  the  former  title  was 
written  by  D.  F.  Ilgen.8  He  quoted  numerous  examples 
from  Greek  and  Roman  writings  to  prove  that  in  antiquity 
founders  of  states  and  kings  in  general  were  regarded  as 
sons  of  gods.  This  he  regarded  as  a  figure  of  speech,  and 

Justin.  Scholars  who  still  quote  the  Sixtine  edition  as  Septuagint 
should  take  a  lesson  in  criticism  from  Servetus.  Curiously  enough  he 
understands  "a  god  of  Israel "  to  be  the  name  given  to  Cyrus  in 
Isaiah,  xlv,  3,  and  looks  upon  it  in  the  light  of  the  title  *  *  God ; '  given 
to  Moses  in  Exodus,  vii,  1,  a  text  that  is  now  regarded  as  belonging  to 
the  priestly  additions  of  the  Persian  period. 

1  Fausto  Sozzini  at  first  was  not  admitted  into  full  fellowship  in  the 
Baptist  churches  of  Poland  because  he  would  not  be  baptized.    But 
subsequently  they  returned  to  the  broader  basis  of  fellowship  pro- 
claimed by  Denck  and  welcomed  him.     In  his  attitude  to  Francis 
David  he  showed  himself  a  less  liberal  attitude. 

2  Spaccio  della  bestia  trionfante,  ed.  Wagner,  II,  248;  but  compare 
also  the  sublime  passage  in  De  Monade,  p.  151. 

8  The  Ancient  Eeligion  of  the  Gentiles,  1705. 
*Nazarenus,  1718. 

"  Primitive  Christianity  Revived,  1711-1712. 
8  The  Reasonableness  of  Christianity,  1695. 
T  Die  Gottlichkeit  der  Vernunft,  1740. 

8  De  notione  tituli  filii  Dei,  in  Paulus,  Memorabilien,  VII,  1795,  pp. 
119-198. 


THE  SON  OF  GOD  141 


looked  for  its  basis  in  the  relation  of  the  king  as  pupil  to 
the  divinity  as  teacher.     Though  Ilgen  failed  to  reach 
the  real  source  of  the  idea,  his  learned  effort  rendered  a 
good  service  by  preparing  the  way  for  a  more  correct  ap- 
preciation.    It  called  attention  to  the  connection  of  the 
title  with  the  kingship  in  Israel.     Other  kings  than  the 
Messiah  had  been  called  sons  of  God.     The  conviction 
spread  that  Son  of  God  was  a  Messianic  title,  current 
among  the  Jews  previous  to  the  appearance  of  Jesus,  and 
naturally  applied  to  him  as  the  Messiah.     In  the  Tubingen 
school,  the  terms  Son  of  God  and  Son  of  Man  came  to  be 
regarded  as  antipodal,  representing  the  exalted  rank  and 
the  personal  humility  of  the  Messiah,  but  no  longer  his 
two  natures,  the  divine  and  the  human.     The  question 
was  raised,  how  far  Jesus  had  used  these  titles  concern- 
ing himself.     While  the  searching  literary  and  historical 
criticism  of  Bruno  Bauer  led  him  to  deny  that  Jesus  had 
employed  either  as  a  designation  of  himself,  Baur  and 
his  school  clung  to  the  idea  that  he  had  used  the  term  Son 
of  Man,  but  were  inclined  to  question  his  use  of  the  term 
Son  of  God.     Schenkel  registered  the  results  reached  by 
critical  exegesis  in  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth  century 
in  an  able  monograph,1  in  which  he  showed  that  Jesus 
spoke  of  sons  of  God  only  in  an  ethical  sense,  but  never 
referred  to  himself  as  the  Son  of  God.     This  conclusion 
was  possible  only  after  the  true  character  of  the  Fourth 
Gospel  had  been  recognized  and  the  later  additions  to  the 
Synoptic  Gospels  had  also  been  discerned.     The  subse- 
quent study  of  the  term  has  tended  to  confirm  his  view  and 
to  render  it  more  unassailable.     Philological  arguments 
of  considerable  importance  have  added  to  its  strength; 
and  a  more   comprehensive  investigation  has   revealed, 
with  greater  clearness,  the  origin  and  growth  of  the  term. 
In  one  respect  the  more  disinterested  exegesis  of  recent 
years  has  reacted  against  the  attitude  of  both  the  rational- 
istic and  the  earlier  historico-critical  schools,  and  returned 

1  Article  Sohn  Gottes  in  Bibellexikon,  1875. 


142  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZAKETH 

to  a  more  original  and  at  all  times  more  popular  point  of 
view.     It  no  longer  hesitates  to  accept  the  •  essential  iden- 
tity of  the  conception  "Son  of  God"  and  the  conception 
"God"  in  many  important  Biblical  passages,  or  at  least 
is  not  disposed  to  deny  that  the  beginnings  of  this  popular 
identification  are  visible  in  the  Scriptures.     If  to  the  ordi- 
nary Christian  the  term  Son  of  God  suggests  a  divine 
being,  the  term  bene  Elohim,  or  Sons  of  God,  suggested  to 
the  early  Hebrews  * '  gods, "  ' '  divine  beings. ' '    In  the  Sem- 
itic languages  the  individual  is  often  designated  as  the 
"son"  of  the  species  to  which  he  belongs.     Thus  "a  son 
of  man"  means  "a  man,"  and  "a  son  of  the  gods"  (ben 
elokim,  bar  elahin)  means  "a  god."     In  Gen.  vi,  3  ff.,  the 
bene  haelohim,  or  "sons  of  the  gods,"  who  see  that  the 
daughters  of  men,  i.  e.,  the  women,  are  beautiful,  and 
therefore  go  in  to  them  and  beget  with  them  children 
who  become  famous  giants,  are  members  of  the  genus 
"god."1     Hence  the  fear  that  through  their  aberration 
the  human  race  may  become  immortal.     The  terms  elohim 
and   bene    elohim   were   evidently   once   used   indiscrimi- 
nately.    That  the   gods  should  have  children  and  that 
these  should  partake  of  their  own  nature,  is  quite  an 
obvious  reflection.     Where  is  the  pantheon  that  does  not 
have  sons  as  well  as  fathers  within  the  divine  circle? 
When  in  Israel  the  term  Elohim  began  to  be  used  without 
a  plural  connotation   and   applied   to   the   tribal   deity. 
Yahwe,  the  term  bene  Elohim  came  to  have  the  meaning 
of  "angels."    Thus  it  was  understood  in  later  times  in 
Gen.  vi,  3  ff.    But  even  the  angels  were  originally  gods. 
As  such  they  had  once  been  identified  with  certain  ele- 
ments, or  they  had  presided  over  the  destinies  of  nations. 
These  functions  they  continued  to   exercise   as   angels. 
They  appeared  in  the  fire,  the  lightning,   the  thunder 
cloud,  the  wind ;  they  moved  about  in  the  stars ;  they  were 
the  guarding  angels  of  the  nations  fighting  their  battles 

'See  Schmidt,   article  Angel  in  the  New  International  Encyclo- 
paedia, 1902. 


THE  SON  OF  GOD  143 


on  high.1  They  still  remained  within  the  celestial  sphere, 
and  were  distinct  from  the  sons  of  men  and  superior  to 
them. 

But  the  story  in  Gen.  vi  also  shows  that  divine  beings 
can  have  human  offspring.  The  idea  is  found  in  many 
nations.  Extraordinary  personalities  can  only  be  ac- 
counted for  as  the  offspring  of  gods  and  women,  or  god- 
desses and  men.  Human  beings  may  therefore  be  the 
sons  of  gods  by  virtue  of  physical  divine  procreation. 
The  tendency  to  make  the  eponym  heroes  sons  of  gods  and 
women,  seen  in  Greece  and  elsewhere,  evidently  existed  also 
in  ancient  Israel.  The  primitive  concrete  conception  has 
indeed  for  the  most  part  been  obscured  by  the  later  meta- 
phorical use.  But  here  and  there  the  original  divine 
paternity  is  only  thinly  disguised,  as  in  the  case  of  Isaac, 
and  occasionally  a  phrase  still  preserves  the  marks  of  a 
period  when  it  was  not  yet  a  figure  of  speech,  as  in  Deut. 
xxxii,  8.  When  sometimes  Israel  is  addressed  as  the  son 
of  Yahwe,  sometimes  the  individual  Israelites  as  his  sons 
and  daughters,  the  most  natural  explanation  is  that  orig- 
inally the  eponymous  hero  was  regarded  as  a  son  of 
Yahwe  and  the  sonship  of  the  members  of  the  people  as 
mediated  through  him. 

In  Israel,  as  in  other  nations,  the  king  was  looked  upon 
as  standing  on  a  higher  level  than  ordinary  men.  He  was 
called  the  Son  of  Yahwe.  He  was  the  Anointed  One. 
Originally  the  pouring  out  of  oil  on  his  head  was  a  sacri- 
fice, an  act  of  worship.  It  was  popularly  thought  that  a 
divine  spirit  possessed  him  and  that  his  wisdom  was  that 
of  a  divine  being.2  "My  lord  is  wise,"  said  the  woman 
of  Tekoa  to  David,3  "according  to  the  wisdom  of  the  gods4 
to  know  all  things  that  are  in  the  earth. ' '  Even  after  the 
exile  a  descendant  of  the  royal  house  who  was  expected 

JSee  especially  the  Boole  of  Daniel,  where  the  angels  of  Persia, 
Greece  and  Israel  figure  prominently. 
a  I  Sam.,  x,  9 ;  II  Sam.,  xiv,  20. 
8 II  Sam.,  xiv,  17,  20. 
4 The  "angel"  is  an  after-thought. 


144  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZAEETH 

to  sit  upon  the  throne  of  David  was  called  "a  mighty 
god"  (el  gMor).1  When  in  the  Hasmonaean  age  kings 
sat  again  upon  the  throne  and  regarded  themselves  as  the 
sons  of  David,  they  derived  comfort  from  the  promise 
given  by  a  prophet  writing  after  the  exile  concerning  the 
Davidic  dynasty.  This  oracle2  had  spoken  of  Zion's  king 
as  the  son  of  Yahwe.  In  a  similar  manner  a  Hasmonaean 
king  is  addressed  in  Ps.  ii  by  Yahwe  as  his  son,  born  as 
such  on  the  day  of  his  coronation,  whom  the  nations  and 
their  rulers  should  obey.  It  is  evident  from  Ps.  xlv,  7,  8, 
that  court-poets  did  not  hesitate  to  address  these  monarchs 
as  "gods."  When  their  opponents  scornfully  designate 
them  as  "gods"  and  "sons  of  God,"  this  shows  both  the 
prevailing  custom  and  the  Pharisaic  objection  to  it. 
Both  are  explained  by  the  court  etiquette  at  Antioch  and 
Alexandria.  The  Seleucidae  received  the  title  "Sons  of 
God";  the  Lagidae  as  successors  of  the  Egyptian  kings 
accepted  such  titles  as  "Son  of  Re,"  "Son  of  Helios," 
* '  Son  of  Isis  and  Osiris. ' '  It  was  natural  for  Hellenizing 
Jews  to  understand  in  the  same  manner  such  titles  as 
"Son  of  Yahwe,"  "Son  of  Elyon,"  and  to  use  as  a  syno- 
nym Elohim  (theos).  Later  the  terms  theos,  divus  were 
used  by  the  Roman  emperors.3  An  inscription  found  at 
Priene  and  apparently  written  for  the  emperor's  birth- 
day praises  Augustus  as  a  son  of  God  born  to  bring  bless- 
edness to  mankind,  as  a  Saviour  of  coming  generations.4 

In  view  of  these  facts  it  is  rather  astonishing  that  there 
is  so  little  evidence  of  the  use  of  the  term  Son  of  God  as  a 
title  of  the  expected  Messiah.  Enoch  cv,  2  is  probably 
an  interpolation.5  Fourth  Ezra  vii,  28  ff.,  xii,  32,  37,  52, 

1  Isaiah,  ix,  6.     A  son  of  Jehoiachin  may  have  been  meant. 

2 II  8am.,  vii,  14. 

8  See  E.  Beurlier,  De  divinis  honoribus  quos  accepterunt  Alexander 
et  successores  ejus,  1890,  p.  47,  59.  Deissmann,  Bibelstudien,  I,  1897, 
p.  166  ff.  Dalman,  Die  Worte  Jesu,  1898,  p.  224.  Eldha  was  freely 
used  in  the  East  as  a  title  of  the  emperors. 

4  Mitteilungen  des  Kaiserlichen  Archaologischen  Instituts,  Bd.  xxiii, 
p.  275  ff. 

0  In  this  judgment  Drummond,  Charles  and  Dalmau  concur. 


THE  SON  OF  GOD  145 


xiv,  9,  are  all  subject  to  grave  doubts.  The  Aramaic 
original  is  lost,  and  the  extant  versions  in  Syriac,  Latin, 
Ethiopia,  Arabic  and  Armenian  have  all  passed  through 
Christian  hands  and  suffered  many  changes  especially  in 
these  passages.  The  uncertainty  as  to  the  original  text 
in  these  places  is  greatly  to  be  regretted,  since  in  this  work 
and  the  probably  contemporaneous  Parables  of  Enoch  (in 
their  earliest  form)  Jewish  speculation  concerning  the 
Messiah  unquestionably  reaches  its  fullest  development. 
When  Celsus  learned  from  Jewish  informants  that  they 
looked  forward  to  the  coming  of  God 's  Messiah,  but  found 
in  the  Scriptures  no  prophecy  of  the  coming  of  a  son  of 
God,1  and  when  the  Aramaic  Targums  to  II  Sam.  vii,  14 
and  Ps.  ii,  7,  labor  to  avoid  the  literal  meaning  of  son  in 
these  passages,2  it  is  natural  to  suspect  a  reaction  both 
against  Christianity  and  against  an  earlier  Jewish  mode 
of  thought.  Was  the  term  ~bar  Elaha  used  at  one  time  as  a 
Messianic  title?  There  is  no  direct  evidence  of  this.  But 
Dalman's  objection  on  the  ground  of  general  avoidance  of 
the  divine  name  is  not  well  founded.  Matthew,  who  ren- 
dered most  idiomatically  the  term  " kingdom  of  heaven," 
used  by  Jesus  in  the  sense  of  "kingdom  of  God,"  employs 
the  terms  "Son  of  God"  and  "sons  of  God"  in  such  a  man- 
ner as  to  suggest  bar  Elaha  and  bene  Elaha  in  the  original. 
If  Aramaic  speaking  Jews  ever  spoke  of  the  coming  king  of 
Israel  as  a  Son  of  God,  they  certainly  used  the  phrase  bar 
Elaha,  and  not  bar  elahin,  which  meant  "angel"  or  "god." 
As  a  human  being  may  become  partaker  of  the  divine 
nature  by  having  a  divine  parent  or  as  king  by  possession 
of  a  divine  spirit,  so  he  may  become  divine  by  elevation 
into  the  celestial  sphere  either  in  the  midst  of  life  through 
a  translation,  or  at  death,  or  on  the  last  day,  through  a  res- 
urrection from  the  dead.  Thus  Gilgamish,  Enoch  and  Eli- 
jah were  translated,  and  a  similar  privilege  was  bestowed 
on  some  Greek  heroes.  When  it  is  said  in  Luke  xx,  36 : 

1  Origen,  Contra  Celsum,  i,  49. 

"The  Targum  to  II  Sam.,  vii,  14,  renders  "like  a  father "  and 
'  *  like  a  son, ' '  and  to  Ps.,  ii,  7,  ' '  thou  art  dear  to  me  as  a  sou. ' ' 
10 


146  THE  PROPHET  OF  NAZARETH 

"They  are  the  sons  of  God,  being  sons  of  the  resurrec- 
tion/' this  is  clearly  a  conception  familiar  in  Aramaic 
speaking  circles.  But  even  Hellenistic  Jews  who  believed 
in  the  immortality  of  the  soul  without  a  resurrection  held 
that  the  godly  man  was  taken  up  to  his  abode  among  the 
sons  of  God  to  obtain  his  inheritance  among  the  holy 
ones.1 

There  were,  consequently,  many  lines  of  speculation  that 
led  to  the  use  of  this  term,  irrespective  of  the  philosoph- 
ical Logos-idea  as  elaborated  by  Philo.  The  term  might 
have  found  an  important  place  in  the  Christianized  con- 
ception of  the  Messiah  as  the  risen  and  translated  Lord, 
particularly  after  the  idea  of  a  physical  divine  generation 
had  developed,  even  if  he  had  not  been  identified  with  the 
Philonic  Logos.  Yet  without  this  addition  to  Christian 
thought  the  peculiar  use  of  the  term  in  the  ecumenic 
creeds  would  not  have  been  possible.  Philo  spoke  of  the 
Logos  as  "the  perfect  Son,"  "the  first-born  Son  of  God," 
"the  second  God,"  "God"  (theos)  without  the  definite 
article.  This  paved  the  way  for  the  Fourth  Gospel  and 
the  symbols  of  Nicaea  and  Constantinople. 

The  term  "Son  of  God"  occurs  in  the  Synoptic  gospels 
27  times,  and  the  term  "the  Son"  9  times.  The  former 
is  found  in  Matthew  11  times,  viz.,  iii,  17  (baptism),  iv, 
3,  6  (temptation),  v,  9  (name  of  peace-makers),  xiv,  33 
(after  walk  on  the  sea),  xvi,  16  (Peter's  confession),  xvii, 
5  (transfiguration),  xxvi,  63  (trial),  xxvii,  40  (at  the 
cross),  43  (alleged  quotation),  54  (centurion).  In  Mark 
it  occurs  7  times,  viz.,  i,  1  (superscription),  11  (baptism), 
iii,  11  (demon),  v,  7  (demon),  ix,  7  (transfiguration),  xiv, 
61  (trial),  xv,  39  (centurion).  In  Luke  it  occurs  9  times, 
viz.,  i,  32,  35  (annunciation),  iii,  22  (baptism),  38  (geneal- 
ogy), iv,  3,  9  (temptation),  viii,  28  (demon),  ix,  35  (trans- 
figuration), xxii,  70  (trial).  "The  Son"  alone  is  found 
in  Matthew  5  times,  viz.,  xi,  27  (three  times  in  hymn  to 
Father  and  Son),  xxiv,  36  (not  even  the  Son),  xxviii,  19 

1  Wisdom  of  Solomon,  V,  5, 


THE  SON  OF  GOD  147 


(baptism) ;  in  Mark  once,  viz.,  xiii,  32  (not  even  the  Son) ; 
and  in  Luke  3  times  viz.,  x,  22  (all  in  hymn  to  Father  and 
Son). 

Already  on  text-critical  grounds  it  may  be  shown  that 
in  a  number  of  these  passages  the  term  is  a  late  addition. 
This  is  the  case  with  the  phrase  "not  even  the  Son"  in 
Matthew,1  and  probably  also  in  Mark.  It  is  also  true  of 
Matthew  xxviii,  19,  which  originally  neither  referred  to 
baptism  nor  to  the  three  persons,  as  the  quotations  of  the 
earlier  text  indicate.2  In  the  only  remaining  utterance 
ascribed  to  Jesus  in  which  "the  Son"  alone  is  used,3  the 
uncertainty  as  to  the  text  does  not  indeed  affect  the  term ; 
but  the  internal  evidence  is  all  the  more  decisive.  In 
other  instances  it  is  likewise  doubtful  what  the  original 
text  was,  but  the  textual  questions  have  less  bearing  on 
the  subject.  Where  we  possess  a  triple  or  a  double  ver- 
sion of  the  same  saying,  it  is  occasionally  difficult  to  de- 
cide whether  the  term  occurred  in  the  earliest  of  them, 
as  in  the  case  of  Peter's  confession.  It  is  a  significant 
fact  that  the  term  Son  of  God  is  never  put  upon  the  lips 
of  Jesus  as  a  designation  of  himself  or  in  reference  to  any 
one  else,  except  in  Matth.  xxvii,  43,  where  his  enemies 
taunt  him  on  the  cross  with  the  assertion,  utterly  un- 
founded in  the  Synoptic  representation,  that  he  had 
claimed,  "I  am  the  Son  of  God."  The  title  is  ascribed  to 
him  by  God  and  angels,  by  the  devil  and  demons,  by  Peter, 
the  high-priest  (questioningly)  and  the  centurion.  "Son 
of  God"  in  Mark  i,  1,  is  not  well  supported  and 
seems  to  be  an  addition;  in  Luke  iii,  38,  it  is  Adam  who 

*In  Matth.,  xxiv,  36.  It  is  lacking  in  many  Greek  MSS.,  in  the 
Syriac,  Egyptian  and  old  Latin  versions,  and  found  only  in  another 
group  of  Greek  MSS.,  and  the  Armenian  and  Ethiopic  versions  and  the 
Jerusalem  Lectionary.  On  this  and  Marie,  xiii,  32,  see  Merx,  Das 
Evangelium  Matthaeus,  1902,  p.  356  ff. 

3Eusebius  frequently  quoted  the  passage  before  the  Council  at 
Nicaea  in  this  form:  "Go  ye  forth  and  teach  the  nations  in  my 
name."  It  is  unfortunate  that  our  most  important  version,  the 
Sinaitic- Syriac,  ends  in  the  midst  of  xxviij,  7.. 

3  Matth.,  xi,  25  ff. 


148  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZAEETH 

is  declared  to  be  a  son  of  God;  and  in  Matth.  xvi,  16,  the 
definition  of  the  Messiah  as  the  Son  of  the  living  God  is 
no  doubt  an  after-thought.  There  is  no  clear  instance, 
therefore,  of  the  title  being  given  him  by  the  evangelists. 

According  to  the  earliest  form  of  the  story  of  the  in- 
fancy in  Luke,  Mary  was  the  wife  of  Joseph  and  Jesus 
their  son.  This  story  was  afterwards  retouched  by  a  be- 
liever in  the  virgin  birth.  In  i,  32  ff.,  the  angel  Gabriel 
announced  to  Mary  that  the  child  she  was  to  bear  would 
be  called  "the  Son  of  the  Most  High/'  because  the  Holy 
Ghost  would  come  upon  her.  Thus  divine  sonship  was 
made  dependent  upon  physical  generation.  The  introduc- 
tion of  this  mythical  conception  belongs  to  a  secondary 
stratum1  and  probably  has  a  Gentile-Christian  origin.2 
The  idea  that  the  Son  of  God  was  born  as  such  at  the  bap- 
tism is  somewhat  older.  Luke  iii,  22,  seems  to  have  read 
originally,  "Thou  art  my  son,  this  day  I  have  begotten 
thee."  This  rests  upon  the  conception  of  the  king  be- 
coming a  partaker  of  the  divine  nature  at  his  accession  to 
the  throne.  The  appearance  of  Jesus  in  a  celestial  body3 
is  probably  a  somewhat  later  idea,  not  untouched  by 
incipient  docetic  speculation.  There  is  no  need  to  dwell 
upon  the  unhistorical  character  of  these  proclamations  by 
celestial  voices. 

The  Synoptic  gospels  represent  Jesus  as  having  been 
repeatedly  proclaimed  as  the  Son  of  God  by  demons  who 
knew  his  real  character,4  and  describe  how  Satan  him- 
self took  advantage  of  his  knowledge  to  tempt  him.6 
There  is  no  tendency  at  the  present  time  to  accept  this 
view  of  the  supernatural  knowledge  and  activity  of  the 
demons.  But  some  critics  are  inclined  to  the  belief  that 

1  See  Conybeare,  in  Zeitschrift  fur  die  Neu  Testament liche  Wissen- 
schaft,  1902,  p.  192  ff. 

2Cf.  Hillmann,  in  JahrMcher  fur  protestantische  Theologie,  1891, 
p.  231  ff. 

*  Matth.,  xvii,  Iff. 

*  Marie,  iii,  11;  v,  7  (Luke,  viii,  28) „ 
B Matth.,  iv,  Iff, 


THE  SON  OF  GOD  149 


the  persons  supposed  to  be  possessed  by  demons  actually 
uttered  the  words  ascribed  to  the  latter.  It  is  argued 
that  the  intense  political  excitement,  the  extraordinary 
impression  of  Jesus'  personality,  and  the  successful  cures 
that  he  wrought,  may  have  caused  some  of  these  unfor- 
tunates to  see  in  him  their  promised  deliverer.  It  is  not 
hope,  however,  but  fear  that  the  demons  express.  The 
very  first  demon  that  Jesus  cast  out  is  said  to  have  known 
him  and  been  afraid  of  him.  There  is  no  suggestion  of  a 
political  character  in  their  words.  No  unmistakable  Mes- 
sianic title,  such  as  "Messiah,"  "Son  of  David"  or  "King 
of  Israel"  is  ever  put  upon  the  lips  of  the  possessed. 
Others  are  said  to  have  hailed  him  as  Son  of  David,  but 
no  demon  apparently  ever  did.  Besides,  Matthew  knows 
nothing  about  these  utterances  of  demons  or  demoniacs. 
It  is  peculiar  to  Mark,  though  one  passage  has  been  taken 
over  into  Luke,1  and  seems  to  be  connected  with  his  view 
of  the  secret  of  Jesus'  Messiahship,  as  Wrede2  has  shown. 
His  Messiahship  may  have  been  concealed  from  men,  but 
could  not  be  hidden  from  the  spirit-world,  whether  good 
or  bad.  The  demons  must  have  known,  in  spite  of  his  dis- 
guise, the  strong  Son  of  God  by  whom  they  were  to  be 
judged.  From  the  standpoint  of  the  beliefs  then  current 
this  is  perfectly  intelligible.  The  rejection  of  these  al- 
leged utterances  of  the  demons  does  not,  of  course,  imply 
a  denial  that  Jesus  practised  exorcism. 

At  Caesarea  Philippi,  Peter  probably  declared,  "Thou 
art  the  Messiah,"  or  "Thou  art  the  Lord's  Messiah."3 
"The  Son  of  the  living  God,"  not  found  in  Mark  and 
Luke,  is  probably  a  late  addition.  We  have  really  no 
authentic  information  as  to  what  took  place  at  the  trial 
of  Jesus.  Matthew  and  Luke  assumed  that  he  must  have 
been  asked  whether  he  was  the  Messiah,  and  that  he  must 
have  preserved  his  Messianic  incognito  to  the  end,  refus- 

1 VIII,  28. 

*  Das  Messiasgeheimniss,  1901,  p.  73  ff. 

8  Meshicha  de  Ydhwe  or  Meshicha  d'  Adonai.  Cf.  Targum  to  I 
Sam.,  xxiv,  7,  and  the  Psalter  of  Solomon,  xviii,  7. 


150  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZAEETH 

ing  to  answer  the  high-priest's  question.1  Mark,  on  tho 
contrary,  assumed  that  he  admitted  his  Messiahship,  when 
the  Messiah  was  defined  as  "the  Son  of  the  Blessed."  It 
is  evident  that  when  these  accounts  were  written  the 
terms  "Son  of  Man,"  "Christ,"  "Son  of  God,"  and  "Son 
of  the  Blessed"  were  all  synonymous,  or  tending  to  be- 
come so,  and  that  "Son  of  God"  was  equivalent  to  "God," 
so  that  the  blasphemy  of  making  oneself  equal  to  God 
could  be  regarded  as  the  charge  brought  against  Jesus. 
Nothing  could  more  clearly  indicate  the  late  and  unreli- 
able nature  of  this  narrative.2  According  to  Matthew 
and  Mark,  the  centurion  at  the  cross,  moved  by  the  mir- 
acles he  had  observed,  exclaimed  "Of  a  truth  this  is  the 
Son  of  God."3  The  miracles  recorded  by  Matthew  were 
a  great  darkness,  an  earthquake,  the  rending  of  the  veil 
in  the  temple,  and  the  rising  of  the  dead  from  their  tombs. 
If  such  miracles  actually  occurred,  it  would  still  be  diffi- 
cult to  understand  how  a  Roman  soldier  could  have  drawn 
the  conclusion  that  the  Jew  who  had  been  put  to  death 
was  the  Son  of  God.  But  there  is  no  reason  to  believe 
that  any  of  these  things  happened.  Mark  is  singularly 
unfortunate  in  his  narrative  owing  to  his  habit  of  abbrevi- 
ating the  accounts  he  copied.  He  mentions  only  the  rend- 
ing of  the  veil  in  the  temple,  which  the  centurion  could 
not  see,  and  leaves  his  exclamation  without  any  cause. 
The  possibility  remains  that  the  centurion  may  have  seen 
in  the  unusually  speedy  release  from  suffering  an  evi- 
dence that  the  prophet  whom  the  Jews  had  crucified  was 
a  righteous  man.4 

If  a  cautious  criticism  of  the  records  renders  it  certain 
that  we  have  no  evidence  for  supposing  Jesus  to  have 

irThat  is  the  force  of  the  words  "Thou  sayest."  Already  the 
Greek  phrase  convinced  Thayer  (Journal  of  Biblical  Literature, 
XIII,  pp.  40-49)  of  this.  Concerning  the  Semitic  phrase  there  can 
be  no  doubt.  See  Merx,  Das  Evangelium  Matthaeus,  1902,  p.  384. 

2  See  also  Brandt,  Evangelische  Geschichte,  1893,  p.  53  ff.,  and 
Wellhausen,  Slcizzen  und  Vorarbeiten,  1899,  VI,  p.  207. 

*Matth.,  xxvii,  54;  Marie,  xv,  39. 

*Luke,  xxiii,  47. 


THE  SON  OF  GOD  151 


been  addressed  by  any  one  as  the  Son  of  God,  or  this  title 
to  have  been  used  by  himself,  a  strong  presumption  is 
raised  against  the  genuineness  of  the  utterance  ascribed 
to  him  in  Matth.  xi,  25  ff.  (Luke  x,  21  ff.).  Before  this 
passage  read  as  it  does  in  our  present  MSS.  with  some 
variations  between  Matthew  and  Luke,  it  seems  to  have 
read  in  the  Greek  "and  no  one  knew  the  Father  except 
the  Son,  and  no  one  the  Son  except  the  Father  and  he  to 
whom  the  Son  is  willing  to  make  a  revelation.  "*  This 
has  been  supposed  to  refer  to  the  initial  discovery  by 
Jesus,  at  a  given  time  in  the  past,  of  the  fatherhood  of 
God  and  of  his  own  peculiar  sonship.  But  no  other  pas- 
sage in  the  Synoptic  gospels  indicates  that  Jesus  made 
the  discovery  that  God  is  a  father,  or  conceived  of  his 
fatherhood  in  such  a  manner  as  to  lead  him  to  the  conclu- 
sion that  he  alone  stood  in  the  relation  to  God  of  a  true 
son.  Ewald2  long  ago  pointed  out  that  the  differ- 
ence of  the  aorist  from  the  present  tense  in  the  Greek 
would  not  appear  in  the  Hebrew  yada' ,  and  Dalman3 
rightly  maintains  that  in  the  Aramaic  text  the  participle 
yada'  and  the  perfect  yeda'  could  not  be  distinguished.  If 
nekar  was  used  in  the  causative,  perfect  and  participle 
would  indeed  be  distinguishable,  but  the  perfect  would 
not  necessarily  convey  the  sense  of  action  in  the  past, 
particularly  in  the  case  of  a  verb  of  this  character. 
Klopper4  with  much  force  urges  the  improbability  of  the 
revelation  of  the  son  through  the  son.  "No  one  knows 
the  Son  except  the  Father"  is  a  somewhat  irrelevant 
statement  that  has  the  appearance  of  a  gloss  drifting  into 
different  places.  A  more  original  form  of  the  text  seems 
to  have  been,  "All  things  (that  are  hidden  from  the  wise 
and  revealed  to  babes)  have  been  transmitted  to  me  by 

1For  a  fuller  statement  of  the  textual  conditions,  see  the  article 
Son  of  God  by  the  present  writer  in  Encyclopaedia  Biblica,  vol. 
IV. 

3  Jahrbucher  fur  Biblische  Wissenschaft,  1855,  p.  160. 

•  Die  Worte  Jesu,  1898,  p.  233. 

*  Zeitschrift  fur  Wissenschaftliche  Theologie,  1896,  p.  501  ff. 


152  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZAEETH 

the  Father,  and  no  one  knows  the  Father  except  the  Son, 
and  he  to  whom  the  Son  is  willing  to  reveal  (the  Father)." 
But  even  such  an  utterance  is  out  of  harmony  with  the 
admittedly  genuine  sayings  of  Jesus,  and  casts  an  unde- 
served reflection  upon  his  character.  His  real  teaching 
concerning  God  as  a  father  and  man  as  his  child  is  as  far 
removed  from  such  speculations  on  the  metaphysical  rela- 
tions of  "the  Father"  and  "the  Son"  as  his  humble  and 
well-balanced  character  is  from  such  assumptions  of  om- 
niscience and  Lordship.  How  can  the  gentle  teacher  who 
protested  against  men  calling  him  ' '  Good  Master ' '  on  the 
ground  that  none  is  good  save  one,  God  only,  be  sup- 
posed to  have  imagined  himself  possessed  of  all  knowl- 
edge and  regarded  all  other  men  as  ignorant  of  God? 
Language  and  thought  alike  show  that  the  author  of  the 
passage  was  familiar  with  most,  if  not  all,  of  the  Christo- 
logical  development  from  Paul  to  the  Fourth  Gospel. 
Brandt1  considers  it  as  a  hymn  constructed  of  material 
that  has  been  to  some  extent  borrowed  from  Ecclesias- 
ticus  li. 

As  to  the  story  of  the  wicked  husbandmen,  Matth.  xxi, 
33-46,  Jiilicher2  has  in  a  most  convincing  manner  demon- 
strated its  allegorical  rather  than  parabolic  nature  and 
the  impossibility  of  regarding  it  in  its  present  form  as  an 
utterance  of  Jesus.  It  differs  from  all  genuine  parables  in 
its  lack  of  verisimilitude,  its  many  assumptions  contrary 
to  fact,  and  the  confusion  of  the  narrative  by  reflec- 
tions upon  later  historic  situations  and  doctrinal  develop- 
ments. When  Matth.  xxii,  1-14  is  compared  with  Luke 
xiv,  15-24,  it  is  readily  seen  that  the  latter  is  more  original. 
The  former  has  been  elaborated  in  several  respects. 
Among  these  is  the  introduction  of  the  figure  of  the  king's 
son.  The  motive  of  the  transformation  is  quite  obvious. 

The  present  Greek  text  of  Matthew  gives  the  impression 
that  Jesus  made  a  distinction  between  his  God  and  the  God 
of  the  disciples,  his  Father  and  theirs.  This  impression  is 

lEvangelische  GescUchte,  1893,  pp.  561,  576. 

B  Gleichnisreden  Jesu,  1899,  p.  385  ff. 


THE  SON  OF  GOD  153 


created  by  the  use  of  the  possessive  pronoun.  He  says 
"my  Father "  and  "your  Father/'  but  "our  Father"  only 
in  a  prayer  designated  for  his  disciples  in  which  it  may  be 
supposed  that  he  did  not  join.  How  far  the  author  of 
our  Greek  Matthew  was  himself  conscious  of  such  a  dis- 
tinction, is  difficult  to  decide.  In  the  case  of  the  Lord's 
Prayer1  it  may  be  questioned  whether  he  had  any  thought 
of  an  objection  on  the  part  of  Jesus  to  identifying  him- 
self with  his  disciples  by  the  use  of  the  pronoun.  The 
pronoun  of  the  second  person  plural  has  scarcely  any  such 
emphasis  in  itself  as  it  obtains  by  contrast  with  the  pro- 
noun of  the  first  person  singular  occasionally  employed. 
Whether  the  Greek  writer  thought  of  this  is  again  sub- 
ject to  doubt.  But  the  fact  that  the  Synoptic  parallels 
often  fail  to  give  this  personal  pronoun  raises  the  question 
whether  in  its  original  form  even  the  Greek  Matthew  had 
it.  Thus  the  whole  discussion  about  the  significance  of 
"our"  in  the  Lord's  Prayer  becomes  futile  by  the  observa- 
tion that  Luke  begins  the  prayer  simply  with  "Father," 
without  any  pronoun.  Of  more  fundamental  importance, 
however,  is  the  fact  that  in  the  original  Aramaic  it  is 
exceedingly  probable  that  no  pronoun  was  used  in  any  of 
the  cases  in  question.  This  is  not  only  a  conclusion  from 
general  custom.  Where  the  Greek  Matthew  has  "my 
Father,"  the  Evangeliarium  Hierosolymitanum  has  simply 
Abba,  "Father"  in  all  extant  passages  (x,  32,  33,  xvi,  17, 
xviii,  10,  19,  35,  xxvi,  39).  The  same  is  true  also  in  Luke 
(ii,  49,  x,  22  al.).  If  this  Aramaic  version  was  made  from 
the  Greek  without  the  aid  of  an  earlier  Aramaic  transla- 
tion, the  absence  of  the  possessive  pronoun  either  indi- 
cates that  it  did  not  exist  in  the  copy  of  the  Greek  text 
used,  or  a  very  strongly  entrenched  usage  in  the  Aramaic. 
If,  as  seems  probable,  an  earlier  Aramaic  gospel  was  con- 
sulted in  the  preparation  of  this  version,  possibly  the  first 
gospel  used  by  Aramaic  speaking  Christians,  the  testi- 
mony is  of  utmost  importance.  Different  lines  of  evi- 

1 M atth.,  vi,  9  ff . ;  Luke,  xi,  2  ff . 


154  THE  PROPHET  OF  NAZARETH 

dence  lead  to  the  conclusion  that  Jesus  said  neither  "my 
Father "  nor  "your  Father,"  but  "the  Father  who  is  in 
heaven"  (Abba  di  bashemayya). 

In  a  series  of  reported  sayings,  the  genuineness  of  which 
there  is  no  reason  to  question,  Jesus  used  the  term  "sons 
of  God,"  or  an  equivalent,  in  such  a  way  as  to  imply 
moral  likeness  to  God.  A  figurative  use  of  the  expres- 
sions "father"  and  "son"  in  religious  parlance,  no  longer 
involving  the  thought  of  physical  generation  or  descent, 
may  be  traced  back  to  the  great  prophets  of  the  eighth 
century.  In  Isa.  i,  2,  xxx,  1,  the  Israelites  are  called 
"sons  of  Yahwe."  Later  Deuteronomy  declares,  "Ye 
are  the  sons  of  Yahwe  your  God,"1  and  asks,  "Is  he  not 
thy  Father,  thy  maker?"2  Yet  the  words  "As  a  man 
chastens  his  son,  so  Yahwe,"3  show  that  the  language  is 
felt  to  be  figurative.  In  Jeremiah,  Yahwe  is  said  to 
be  a  father,4  and  asks,  "How  shall  I  place  thee  among 
sons,  i.  e.,  make  thee  a  son?"5  In  Jer.  xxxi,  9,  Yahwe 
promises,  '  *  I  shall  be  a  father  to  Israel,  and  Ephraim  shall 
be  my  first-born."  The  same  thought  is  expressed  in 
Exodus  iv,  22.  In  a  post-exilic  addition  to  Hosea  the 
prospect  is  held  out  to  the  Israelites  that  they  shall  be 
called  ' '  sons  of  the  living  God. '  '6  In  Isa.  Ixiv,  8,  the  peo- 
ple speak  of  God  as  "our  father."  In  Ps.  Ixxiii,  15,  the 
Jews  are  spoken  of  as  "the  generation  of  thy  children." 
The  fatherhood  of  God  is  finely  expressed  in  the  prayer 
found  in  Ecclesiasticus  xxiii,  1  ff.  In  Ecclus.  iv,  11,  the 
Hebrew  reads,  "and  God  shall  call  thee  son,"  an  expres- 
sion reminding  strongly  of  the  manner  in  which  Jesus 
referred  to  sonship.  The  same  ethical  character  is  given 
to  the  term  in  the  Wisdom  of  Solomon,  ii,  18,  "If  the 
righteous  man  is  God's  son,  he  will  uphold  him."  A  num- 

1XIV,  1. 

2  XXXII,  6. 

8 1,  31;  viii,  5. 

4  III,  4. 

6  III,  19. 

•II,  1  (Eng.  tr.,  i,  10). 


THE  SON  OF  GOD  155 


ber  of  passages  in  this  book  describe  the  Israelites  as  sons 
and  daughters  of  God,  and  in  xviii,  13,  Israel  is  said  to  be 
recognized  by  the  Egyptians  as  "God's  son."  In  Judith 
ix,  4,  the  Jews  are  God's  "dear  children";  in  Esther  vi, 
14,  they  are  ' '  the  sons  of  the  only  true  God " ;  in  III  Mace, 
vi,  28,  they  are  "the  sons  of  the  most  mighty  and  heavenly 
living  God";  in  Oracula  Sibyllina  III,  702,  they  are 
"sons  of  the  great  God";  in  the  Psalter  of  Solomon  vii, 
30,  they  are  "sons  of  their  God";  in  the  Assumption  of 
Moses  x,  27,  they  are  ' '  sons  of  God, ' '  and  in  IV  Ezra  vi,  58, 
they  are  spoken  of  as  "thy  people,  first-born  and  only- 
begotten."  The  predominant  idea  no  doubt  was  that  the 
Israelites  were  sons  and  daughters  of  Yahwe  by  virtue  of 
their  connection  with  Yahwe 's  holy  people,  but  even  in 
this  limitation  the  idea  of  moral  likeness  to  their  God  is 
largely  present.  And  occasionally  the  thought  of  a  spir- 
itual sonship  based  on  character  is  expressed. 

It  is  this  ethical  sense  that  Jesus  seems  to  have  given 
exclusively  to  the  term.  In  Matth.  v,  9,  he  voices  his  con- 
viction that  when  the  kingdom  of  heaven  shall  come,  the 
peace-makers  will  be  recognized  as  the  sons  of  God,  his 
spiritual  kindred.  In  Matth.  v,  45,  those  who  show  a  for- 
giving spirit,  and  in  this  respect  are  like  God,  are  spoken 
of  as  the  sons  of  God.  As  there  is  some  moral  likeness  to 
God  in  all  men,  all  are  in  one  sense  his  children,  and  he 
stands  in  the  relation  of  Father  even  to  those  who  are 
themselves  evil.1  In  fact  there  is  evil  in  all  of  God's 
children.  It  is  not  right  to  call  any  man  good.  Jesus 
deprecated  this  attribute  in  his  own  case,  as  he  rejected 
such  titles  as  "Rabbi,"  "Abba,"  "Moreh";  for  "one  is 
the  master,"  "one  is  the  father,"  "one  is  the  teacher," 
"one  is  good,"  namely  God.2  But  he  knows  that  there  is 
a  higher  realization  of  ethical  likeness  to  God  in  some  men 
than  in  others,  and  is  not  disposed  to  overlook  the  dis- 

1  Matth.,  vii,  11. 

alt  has  been  most  clearly  recognized  by  Kohler  (Jewish  Quarterly 
Review,  XIII,  p.  567  ff.)  that  Eabba,  Abba  and  Moreh  all  refer  to 
God  in  the  saying  of  Jesus  recorded  in  Matth.,  xxiii,  8  ff. 


156  THE  PBOPHET  OF  NAZARETH 

tinction.  Even  when  he  spoke  of  the  angel-like  existence 
of  those  who  were  raised  from  the  dead  and  were  sons  of 
God,  being  sons  of  the  resurrection,1  he  associated  with 
the  term  an  ethical  quality.  They  were  persons  accounted 
worthy  of  a  resurrection,  and  they  lived  a  life  of  divine 
purity. 

It  is  evident  that  Jesus  derived  inspiration,  comfort  and 
strength  from  the  thought  that  he  was  himself  a  child  of 
the  Heavenly  Father.  His  keen  sense  of  the  fatherhood 
of  God  created  within  him  a  true  filial  attitude  and  a  feel- 
ing of  brotherly  affection  for  all  God's  children,  the  sons 
of  men.  In  reverence  and  love  he  sought  to  enter  into 
fellowship  with  God.  How  richly  he  was  rewarded,  he 
himself  realized,  not  without  a  sense  of  exaltation,  but  in 
marvelous  freedom  from  spiritual  pride  and  selfish  am- 
bition. It  is  not  for  the  historian,  who  can  only  tenta- 
tively and  with  many  misgivings  affirm  that  certain  words 
may  have  been  spoken  by  the  great  prophet  of  Nazareth, 
and  that  certain  events  are  likely  to  have  occurred  in  his 
life,  to  presume  upon  a  description  of  the  innermost 
thoughts  that  stirred  his  mind  and  the  deepest  emotions 
that  filled  his  heart.  Many  things  which  occupied  that 
pure  and  lofty  spirit  were  carried  forever  beyond  the  ken 
of  his  fellow-men  by  the  cross  of  Calvary.  Yet  none  tell 
more  freely  their  deepest  secrets  than  the  truly  great. 
The  vitality  of  their  message  and  the  power  of  their  influ- 
ence are  largely  due  to  this  full  and  unreserved  self- 
expression.  There  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  thoughts  and 
principles  which  stand  forth  most  vividly  in  his  genuine 
utterances  occupied  the  largest  room  in  his  inner  world, 
that  the  love  of  God  and  man  which  his  message  breathes 
stamped  his  ideas  and  shaped  his  relations  to  all  things  in 
heaven  and  earth.  If  he  conceived  of  the  fatherhood  of 
God  and  the  sonship  of  man  as  universal,  and  avoided  the 
temptation  of  assuming  a  special  and  unique  relationship 
not  attainable  by  others,  it  was  because  the  genuineness 

lLuke,  xx,  36. 


THE  SON  OF  GOD  157 


of  his  experience  and  the  righteousness  of  his  moral  dis- 
position gave  him  a  peculiarly  clear  vision  of  truth.  So 
well  did  he  realize  his  ideal  of  man  as  the  child  of  the 
Father  in  heaven  that  men,  fascinated  by  the  spiritual 
beauty  radiating  from  him,  have  gladly  accorded  him  a 
title  he  never  thought  of  claiming  for  himself,  and  have 
called  him  the  Son  of  God. 

In  proportion  as  the  distance  in  time  increased  between 
him  and  those  to  whom  his  personality  became  the  symbol 
and  agency  of  man's  redemption,  the  term  Son  of  God 
assumed  a  more  and  more  metaphysical  significance. 
Especially  was  this  true  among  Hellenistic  Jews  and  con- 
verted Greeks  and  Romans.  The  tendency  may  be  ob- 
served in  the  Pauline  literature:  the  later  epistles — such 
as  those  to  the  Colossians,  Ephesians  and  Hebrews — show 
a  more  marked  influence  of  Philo's  thought.  In  the  New 
Testament  the  climax  is  reached  in  the  Johannine  writings. 
The  Fourth  Gospel  uses  the  term  Son  of  God  10  times,  viz., 
i,  34  (testimony  of  John),  50  (Nathanael's  confession), 
iii,  18  (belief  in  him,),  v,  25  (dead  hearing  his  voice),  vi, 
69  (Peter's  confession),  x,  36  (use  in  the  Old  Testament), 
xi,  4  (glorification  through  Lazarus),  xi,  37  (Martha's 
confession),  xix,  7  (equal  to  God),  xx,  31  (purpose  of  the 
gospel).  "The  only  begotten  Son"  occurs  twice,  viz., 
i,  18,  and  iii,  16,  and  "thy  Son"  once,  in  xvii,  11.  "The 
Son"  is  found  14  times,  viz.,  iii,  17,  35,  36,  v,  20,  21,  22 
twice,  23,  26,  vi,  40,  viii,  35,  36,  xiv,  13,  xvii,  1.  "The  Son 
of  God"  is  used  by  John  the  Baptist,  Nathanael,  Peter, 
Martha,  and  the  evangelist,  but  rarely  by  Jesus  himself; 
"the  Son"  is  as  a  rule  employed  by  Jesus  alone.  In  the 
churches  whose  Christological  conceptions  this  gospel 
reflects  the  longer  form  was  evidently  used  in  public  con- 
fessions of  faith,  and  the  shorter  form  had  come  into 
vogue  in  theological  discussions.  To  the  Fourth  Evange- 
list "the  Son"  was  a  divine  being  who  had  appeared  in 
the  flesh,  a  god  who  had  assumed  human  nature.  It  was 
not  blasphemy  for  him  to  claim  a  title  felt  to  be  equivalent 
to  "God,"  for  he  had  been  sent  from  heaven,  since  the 


158  THE  PROPHET  OF  NAZARETH 

Scriptures  called  those  ' '  gods ' '  who  had  only  received  ora- 
cles from  heaven.1  In  this  gospel  those  are  praised  whose 
faith  permits  them  to  say  "my  Lord  and  my  God,"  with- 
out having  seen  the  evidences  of  Christ's  resurrection.2 
While  the  character  and  date  of  the  Fourth  Gospel  render 
it  impossible  to  use  it  as  a  source  for  the  life  and  teach- 
ing of  Jesus,3  it  is  one  of  the  most  precious  testimonies  left 
us  by  the  Early  Church,  not  only  of  an  important  type  of 
Christian  thought,  but,  what  is  more,  of  the  spiritual  free- 
dom with  which  Jesus  makes  those  free  who  are  touched 
by  his  spirit. 

It  is  the  thoroughness  with  which  Jesus  realized  in  him- 
self the  ethical  content  of  a  filial  attitude  toward  God  that 
is  the  ultimate  reason  for  the  fact  that  divine  sonship, 
both  in  a  physical  and  a  metaphysical  sense,  has  been 
attributed  to  him.  This  is  the  secret  of  the  quickening 
touch  he  has  ever  communicated  to  the  life  and  the  free- 
dom of  the  spirit,  and  which  affects  the  modern  world 
no  less  powerfully  than  the  ancient. 

1 X,  33  ff. 

2  XX,  29. 

8  See  chapter  ix. 


CHAPTER  VII 

THE  LOGOS 

"In  the  beginning  was  the  Logos,  and  the  Logos  was 
with  God,  and  the  Logos  was  God, ' '  ' '  and  the  Logos  became 
flesh  and  tabernacled  among  us,  and  we  beheld  his  glory, 
the  glory  of  an  only  begotten  (son)  of  the  Father,  full 
of  grace  and  truth."  These  words  in  the  Prologue  to  the 
Fourth  Gospel1  are  the  Scriptural  basis  of  the  doctrine 
of  the  incarnation.  In  the  light  of  the  ecumenic  creeds 
they  were  naturally  understood  as  affirming  that  the  eter- 
nal Son  of  God,  the  only  begotten  of  the  Father,  the 
second  person  of  the  Trinity,  had  become  a  man.  The 
utterances  ascribed  to  Jesus  in  the  Gospel  could  not  but 
appear  as  in  perfect  harmony  with  a  divine  personality  re- 
vealing himself  in  the  flesh.  And  the  traditional  author- 
ship seemed  to  preclude  any  question  as  to  the  genuineness 
of  these  discourses.  If  such  words  were  actually  spoken  by 
Jesus,  there  could  be  no  doubt  that  he  regarded  himself 
as  a  being  different  in  his  nature  from  all  other  men, 
standing  in  absolutely  unique  relations  to  the  Father, 
holding  an  eternal  Sonship  entirely  out  of  the  question  in 
the  case  of  a  mere  man  and  implying  possession  of  the 
attributes  of  deity. 

But  there  was  a  time  when  it  had  not  yet  entered  into 
the  mind  of  any  disciple  of  Jesus  to  apply  to  him  the 
term  Logos,  to  speculate  upon  the  relations  of  the  Father 
and  the  Son,  or  to  assume  that  God  had  appeared  in  the 
flesh.  When  the  idea  of  an  incarnation  of  the  divine 
Logos  in  Jesus  was  presented  in  the  Church,  it  met  with 

1  John,  i,  1, 14, 

159 


160  THE  PROPHET  OF  NAZARETH 

strong  opposition  on  the  part  of  conservative  Christians,1 
who  recognized  its  origin.  They  knew  that  the  Logos- 
speculation  had  its  source  in  Greek  philosophy,  and  that 
the  notion  of  a  divine  emanation  appearing  in  the  flesh 
was  characteristic  of  Gnosticism.  Hence  they  regarded 
the  Fourth  Gospel  as  a  work  of  the  Gnostic  teacher,  Cerin- 
thus.2  In  the  Reformation  Period  Baptist  thinkers  in 
Italy3  revived  this  attitude  toward  the  teaching  of  the 
Fourth  Gospel,  though  without  committing  themselves  to 
the  conjecture  as  to  its  authorship  made  by  the  Alogi  in 
Christian  antiquity.  Since  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury careful  examination  by  competent  Christian  scholars 
has  rendered  increasingly  manifest  the  essential  correct- 
ness of  this  view.  The  sporadic  attempts  to  remove  the 
Logos-idea  of  this  gospel  from  its  natural  place  in  the 
history  of  philosophical  thought  in  the  Graeco-Roman 
world  and  to  vindicate  for  it  a  different  origin  have  sig- 
nally failed.  The  more  thoroughly  this  history  is  studied, 
the  more  evident  it  becomes  that  the  thought  of  the  Fourth 
Evangelist  is  only  a  link  in  a  chain  that  extends  from 
Heraclitus  to  Athanasius  and  in  fact  reaches  beyond  these 
points  in  both  directions,  and  that  the  most  important 
earlier  links  were  furnished  by  Heraclitus,  Plato,  the 
Stoics  and  Philo  of  Alexandria. 

The  tendencies  of  thought  that  found  expression  in  the 
Greek  speculation  concerning  the  Logos  may  be  observed 
in  the  intellectual  life  of  many  other  peoples.  Man's 
great  achievement  in  giving  utterance  to  his  thought,  and 
making  it  intelligible  by  means  of  articulate  speech,  left  a 
long-lived  impression  of  the  mystery  and  power  of  the 
word.  Many  races  still  preserve  the  conviction  that  by 
the  spell  of  the  word  gods  can  be  moved,  demons  can  be 
bound,  men  can  be  ruled,  the  sick  can  be  healed,  miracles 

1Epiphanius  (LI,  4)  distinctly  says  of  the  Alogi  "they  themselves 
seem  to  believe  the  same  things  as  we,"  and  neither  Irenaeus  nor 
Hippolytus  ever  suggests  that  they  were  heretics. 

2  Epiphanius,  LI,  3 ;  Philaster,  De  haeres,  LX. 

*  See  Comba,  I  nostri  protestanti,  1897,  II,  488  ff , 


THE  LOGOS  161 


can  be  wrought.  The  rhythmical  expression,  the  ap- 
proved formula,  the  secret  term  of  conjuration,  is  espe- 
cially thought  to  possess  great  potency.  As  among  men 
there  are  priests,  prophets,  diviners,  exorcists,  magicians 
whose  word  is  more  powerful  than  that  of  others,  so 
there  are,  in  the  world  of  spirits,  prophets,  interpreters, 
speakers  whose  voice  is  especially  heard  and  whose  word 
is  never  void  of  effect.  There  are  gods  like  Nabu,  Hermes, 
Mercury,  Loke.  As  the  local  gods  form  themselves  into 
groups,  families,  organized  monarchies,  these  become  the 
spokesmen  of  the  divine  council  or  the  supreme  ruler. 
Nabu  represents  Marduk,  Hermes  speaks  for  Zeus,  Loke 
executes  the  commands  of  Odin.  One  god  brings  the  mes- 
sage, or  carries  out  the  will,  of  another.  With  the  growth 
of  philosophic  reflection,  the  attributes  of  one  god  are 
given  to  another;  one  reveals  himself  through  another; 
the  universal  concept  of  divinity  becomes  manifest  in 
each ;  gods  are  identified.  As  a  god  may  live  in  and  mani- 
fest himself  through  another  god,  so  he  may  dwell  in  a 
man  and  reveal  his  power  and  wisdom  in  him.  There  is 
the  hidden  and  the  revealed  divinity.  A  maturer  thought 
sees  in  man,  whose  word  expresses  his  idea  and  will,  a 
microcosm  reflecting  the  character  of  the  macrocosm,  and 
postulates  a  universal  reason  expressing  itself  in  the  phe- 
nomenal world. 

There  is  abundant  testimony  of  such  a  development. 
Our  growing  acquaintance  with  the  thought  of  India  and 
Persia,  of  Babylonia  and  Egypt,  furnishes  evidence  of 
both  its  lower  and  higher  stages.  How  far  the  earlier  or 
contemporaneous  speculations  of  some  of  these  nations 
supplied  original  impulses  or  new  directions  to  the 
thought  of  Greek  philosophers,  is  exceedingly  difficult  to 
determine.  The  Greeks  had  the  happy  faculty  of  putting 
the  impress  of  their  own  genius  so  thoroughly  upon  any- 
thing they  touched  that  even  what  they  borrowed  has 
all  the  appearance  of  being  their  peculiar  property.  It 
would  be  hazardous  to  affirm  an  influence  from  India 
before  the  Persian  wars,  and  scarcely  safe  to  insist  upon 
11 


162  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZAKETH 

it  before  Alexander  or  even  the  establishment  of  the 
Graeco-Bactrian  kingdom  and  the  diplomatic  relations 
between  the  kingdom  of  Pataliputra  and  Alexandria. 
But  after  the  middle  of  the  third  century  important  cur- 
rents of  thought  may  have  flowed  to  the  West.  Beyond 
a  question  Philo  as  well  as  the  great  Gnostic  teachers  were 
influenced  by  ideas  whose  home  was  in  India  and  Persia. 
Concerning  the  elements  of  thought  that  may  have 
reached  the  Ionian  Greeks  through  Asia  Minor  from  the 
Babylonian  sphere  of  influence  we  are  still  in  the  dark. 

On  the  other  hand,  it  is  a  well-known  fact  that  numer- 
ous Greeks  were  settled  in  Egypt  in  the  seventh  century 
and  that  many  thoughtful  men  crossed  the  Mediterranean 
to  behold  the  wonders  of  the  ancient  civilization  in  the 
valley  of  the  Nile.  We  are  better  prepared  to  state  what 
they  might  have  learned  of  the  wisdom  of  the  Egyptians, 
had  their  acquaintance  with  language  and  literature  been 
even  equal  to  our  own,  than  what  they  actually  did  learn. 
It  is  not  improbable,  however,  that  the  Greeks  settled  in 
the  land  with  whom  distinguished  visitors  came  in  con- 
tact were  to  some  extent  familiar  with  Egyptian  speech 
and  letters  and  able  to  give  them  much  curious  informa- 
tion. We  know  that  in  the  days  of  Psammetich  priests 
in  Memphis  expressed  ideas  that  are  not  far  removed  from 
the  earlier  forms  of  the  Logos-conception;1  and  there  is 
no  reason  to  believe  that  these  were  held  in  such  an 
esoteric  manner  that  intelligent  Greeks,  athirst  for  knowl- 
edge and  filled  with  admiration  for  Egyptian  learning, 
may  not  have  become  acquainted  with  them.  Be  this  as 
it  may,  the  influence  of  native  thought  upon  the  Greek- 
speaking  population  of  the  Delta  in  Ptolemaic  times  has 
undoubtedly  been  underestimated.  There  were  many 
native  Egyptians  who  spoke  Greek,  and  their  relations 
with  Macedonians,  Greeks  and  Jews  must  have  offered 
constant  opportunities  for  interchange  of  thought. 
When  the  development  of  the  Logos-conception  is 
4  See  J.  A.  Breasted,  in  Zeitschrift  fur  Aegyptische  Sprache  und 
AltertumsJcunde,  xxxix,  1901,  1  ff. 


THE  LOGOS  163 


treated  as  essentially  a  product  of  Greek  thought,  it  must, 
therefore,  be  borne  in  mind  that  extraneous  influences 
cannot  be  wholly  excluded.  In  order  to  appreciate  fully 
the  significance  of  this  idea,  it  is  necessary  to  consider 
it  in  connection  with  the  growth  of  Greek  philosophy. 
This  has  recently  been  done  by  Anathon  Aall1  in  a  lucid 
and,  for  the  most  part,  convincing  manner.  For  our  pres- 
ent purpose  it  must  suffice  to  call  attention  briefly  to  the 
salient  features  of  its  long  history.  Already  in  the  Orphic 
religion  the  divine  immanence  is  emphasized.  Zeus  is  in 
all.2  Thales  regarded  God  as  the  reason  (nous)  of  the 
world.3  Xenophanes  preached  the  doctrine  of  the  unity 
of  God  with  the  fervor  of  a  Hebrew  prophet;  but  his 
monotheism  was  not  based  on  reverence  and  zeal  for  a 
tribal  deity,  it  was  founded  on  his  conviction  that  the 
universe  is  governed  by  one  reason.4  Parmenides  dis- 
tinguished between  the  phenomenal  world  perceived 
through  the  senses  and  absolute  being  revealing  itself  to 
human  reason.  For  this  instrument  of  certain  knowledge 
he  used  the  term  Logos. 

It  may  not  be  capable  of  absolute  proof,  but  is  ex- 
tremely probable,  that  Heraclitus  of  Ephesus  who  lived  in 
the  fifth  century  B.  C.  was  influenced  by  Persian  thought. 
The  part  played  by  fire  in  his  system  is  particularly  sig- 
nificant. In  view  of  his  polemical  attitude  to  the  popular 
cults  it  is  doubtful  whether  this  impact  came  through 
the  mysteries.  His  personal  relation  to  the  Logos  is  sug- 
gestive of  Oriental  modes  of  thought.  "Not  to  me/'  he 
declares,  "but  to  the  Logos  ye  should  listen. "  Yet  this 

1  Der  Logos,  I.  Geschichte  der  Logosidee  in  der  griechischen  Philos- 
ophic, 1896,  II.  Geschichte  der  Logosidee  in  der  Christlichen  Litera- 
tur,  1899.  The  most  important  earlier  monographs  are  those  by  J.  M. 
Heinze,  Die  Lehre  vom  Logos  in  der  griechischen  Philosophie,  1872, 
and  Jean  Reville,  La  doctrine  du  Logos  dans  le  quatrieme  evangile  et 
dans  les  oeuvres  de  Philon,  1881.  The  studies  of  Gfrorer,  Soulier, 
Seigfried  and  Grill  have  also  furthered  our  knowledge. 

'Stobaeus,  Eclogae,  I,  40. 

•Stobaeus,  Eclogae,  I,  56. 

*  See  Fragment  3  in  Karsten,  Philos-Graec,  1. 


164  THE  PKOPHET  OF  NAZAKETH 

Logos  is  not  a  personality;  it  is  the  objective,  universal 
reason  whose  spokesman  he  feels  himself  to  be  and  whose 
claims  to  recognition  he  urges  against  the  assumptions  of 
individual  reason.  It  may  not  be  permissible  to  press  his 
professed  monism  into  logical  consistency  by  postulating 
an  identity  of  Logos  and  fire.  Heraclitus  makes  an  epoch 
in  the  history  of  the  Logos-conception,  because  with  him 
the  term  is  used  for  the  first  time  as  a  designation  of 
cosmic,  universal  reason.1 

Neither  Anaxagoras  nor  Empedocles,  neither  Plato  nor 
Aristotle  continued  directly  the  Logos-speculation  of  the 
Ephesian  philosopher.  But  indirectly  they  all  contrib- 
uted to  a  marked  extent  to  the  further  development  of 
this  idea.  Anaxagoras  gave  to  the  term  Nous  a  richer 
content,  making  it  suggestive  of  spirit  rather  than  abstract 
reason,2  and  Empedocles  introduced  into  the  spiritual  sub- 
stance of  the  world  the  two  motive  forces  of  love  and 
hate.3  This  extension  of  the  idea  in  the  direction  of  per- 
sonality left  the  apparently  lifeless  part  of  the  universe 
out  of  consideration.  A  dualism  resulted  which  the  So- 
cratic  school  sought  to  overcome  by  a  teleologic  idealism. 
We  have  not  the  means  of  determining  precisely  what 
contribution  Socrates  made  to  this  new  movement  of 
thought.  It  may  be  assumed,  however,  with  some  degree 
of  probability,  that  the  view  of  objective  reality  as  con- 
sisting of  a  system  of  cognizable  conceptions  ethically  de- 
termined by  the  cosmic  end,  and  of  the  subject  as  realiz- 
ing its  ideal  and  obtaining  adequate  knowledge  through 
moral  and  intellectual  self-perfecting,  goes  back  to  him. 
Plato  conceived  of  the  universe  as  a  living  being  possessed 
of  reason,  will,  goodness  and  beauty,  becoming  known  to 
human  reason  in  a  system  of  ideas  which  constitute  the 

*See  especially  Anathon  Aall  in  Zeitschrift  fur  Philosophic  und 
philosophische  Kritik,  1895,  p.  217  ff.,  E.  Pfleiderer,  Die  Philosophic 
des  Hera  Tclit  von  Ephesus  im  Lichte  der  Mysterienidee,  1886,  and 
Schuster  in  Acta  Societatis  philol.  Lips.,  1873. 

2  Mullach,  Fragm.  phil.  graec.,  Anavagoras.  f  r,  12. 

•I.  c.t  378  ff. 


THE  LOGOS  165 


thought-forms  and  real  substance  of  the  phenomena  per- 
ceived through  the  senses.  Like  Socrates,  he  believed  in 
a  daimon,  sometimes  conceived  of  as  a  shadow  of  the  per- 
sonality, its  reflection  in  an  idea,  sometimes  as  an  ideal  ego 
imposing  its  higher  demands  on  the  actually  realized  ego. 
It  is  difficult  to  avoid  the  impression  that  this  is  a  Hel- 
lenized  form  of  the  Egyptian  idea  of  the  shadow,  double, 
or  genius,  called  ~ba  or  ka.  Aristotle  was  led  by  his  pro- 
found study  of  nature  to  reject  Plato's  doctrine  of  fixed 
thought-forms,  or  ideas,  as  bringing  in  a  series  of  inter- 
mediate entities  unwarranted  by  the  facts.  But  though 
he  substituted  for  the  system  of  ideas  the  conception  of  an 
organism  with  its  functions,  he  was  none  the  less  an 
idealist.  In  this  philosophy  the  word  Logos  is  used  only 
as  a  technical  term  for  concept. 

When  the  Stoic  philosophers,  Zeno,  Cleanthes,  Chrysip- 
pus,  and  their  successors,  returned  to  the  conception  of 
Heraclitus,  they  were  able  to  draw  upon  the  wealth  of 
thought  bequeathed  by  the  Socratic  school.  Though,  in 
their  endeavor  to  establish  a  monistic  view  of  the  uni- 
verse, they  clung  somewhat  more  closely  to  the  concep- 
tion of  vital  energy,  and  transformed  the  ideas  of  Plato 
into  powers,  thus  exposing  themselves  to  the  ill-founded 
suspicion  of  materialism,  they  strongly  affirmed  the 
rationality  and  moral  quality  of  cosmic  life.  The  Logos- 
conception  became  an  instrument  for  the  expression  of 
both  their  ontology  and  their  ethics.  New  names  were 
coined  by  them  for  the  different  aspects  of  the  Logos.  As 
the  vital  force  of  the  universe  it  was  called  Logos  sper- 
matikos.  As  operative  in  human  consciousness,  it  was 
viewed  either  in  the  light  of  an  unexpressed  faculty, 
Logos  endiathetos,  or  as  an  outgoing  manifestation,  Logos 
prophorikos.  But,  however  expressed,  the  Logos  im- 
plied the  rationality  of  the  scheme  of  existence  and  the 
universality  of  moral  law.  The  precise  relation  between 
the  Logos  and  the  God-idea  of  the  Stoics  cannot  easily  be 
defined.  It  would  be  going  too  far  to  assert  that  the 
Logos  of  these  thinkers  was  a  personal  entity.  But  it  is 


166  THE  PBOPHET  OP  NAZA&ETH 

equally  uncertain  whether  they  conceived  of  the  living 
macrocosm  so  closely  on  the  analogy  of  man  as  the  micro- 
cosm as  to  give  it  the  same  kind  of  a  personality.  The 
reports  of  Christian  opponents  that  have  the  most  direct 
bearing  on  this  point  manifestly  suffer  from  a  want  of 
adequate  appreciation.  There  can  be  no  question  that  the 
Logos-conception  effectively  helped  to  make  Stoicism  the 
greatest  agency  for  the  intellectual  and  moral  uplift  of 
the  Graeco-Roman  world.1 

The  influence  of  Philo2  upon  the  further  development 
of  this  idea  is  so  marked  that  there  is  a  decided  tendency 
to  overestimate  his  originality.  He  undoubtedly  based 
his  conception  largely  upon  that  of  the  Stoics.  Such 
modifications  as  may  be  observed  are  apparently  due 
either  to  the  strong  impression  of  Plato's  thought  or  to 
the  necessity  of  bringing  the  altogether  heterogeneous 
ideas  of  his  Jewish  ancestors  into  harmony  with  Greek 
philosophy.  The  Stoics  themselves  furnished  him  with 
the  instrument  for  achieving  the  latter  task  in  the  alle- 
gorical method  of  interpretation.  It  is  not  impossible 
that  he  was  to  some  extent  affected  also  by  native  Egyp- 
tian and  Oriental  speculation.  But  the  traces  of  such  an 
influence  are  more  marked  in  parts  of  his  system  not  so 
closely  connected  with  the  Logos-idea3  From  the  ap- 
pearance of  the  term  Memra  (Word)  in  Aramaic  Targums 
it  has  been  inferred  that  Philo  may  have  received  impulses 
from  speculations  current  in  the  Palestinian  synagogues. 
But  the  date  of  these  Targums  renders  any  such  assump- 
tion unsafe.  The  oldest  of  them  is  not  likely  to  have  been 
edited  before  the  third  century  A.  D.,  and  cannot  be  used 
with  any  degree  of  assurance  to  show  what  oral  render- 

1  The  account  of  the  Stoic  Logos  idea  and  its  influence  on  Stoic 
ethics  given  by  Anathon  Aall  (Geschichte  der  Logosidee,  I,  98-167)  is 
both  appreciative  and  critical. 

8  An  admirable  sketch  of  the  life  and  writings  of  Philo  will  be 
found  in  Schiirer,  Geschichte  des  jiidischen  Volkes  im  Zeitalter  Jesu 
Chrlsti,  3d  ed.,  Ill,  1898,  p.  487-562. 

B  For  instance,  in  the  doctrine  of  metempsychosis. 


THE  LOGOS  167 


ings  of  Biblical  passages  were  current  in  the  synagogues 
of  Palestine  before  the  time  of  Philo.  This  was  already 
seen  by  Bruno  Bauer,  and  is  now  generally  recognized.1 
Whether  the  Targumic  tendency  to  ascribe  to  the  Memra 
certain  activities  and  feelings  ascribed  by  the  Biblical 
text  to  God  is  due  to  acquaintance  with  Philo,  as  many 
suppose,  or  is  the  product  of  a  similar  occupation  with 
Greek  philosophy  on  the  part  of  Palestinian  rabbis  im- 
pelled by  the  general  desire  to  transfer  divine  functions 
to  intermediate  beings,  is  a  question  that  admits  of 
no  definite  answer.  It  may  be  noted,  however,  that  in 
the  remains  of  Jewish  Alexandrian  writings  from  the 
period  before  Philo,  the  Logos  plays  no  role,  whereas  the 
term  Wisdom  is  used  in  a  similar  manner.  This  goes 
back  to  Palestinian  custom.  Already  in  the  book  of 
Proverbs  "  Wisdom "  appears  in  a  position  that  suggests 
personality.  It  probably  has  a  Persian2  rather  than  a 
Greek  origin.  While  there  is  no  indication  that  Philo  to 
any  extent  drew  his  Logos-conception  from  this  Sophia- 
conception,  the  prevalence  of  the  latter  both  in  Palestine 
and  in  Egypt  before  Philo  renders  it  probable  that  the 
Jewish  mind  began  to  operate  with  the  former  idea  about 
his  time.  If  he  was  not  the  first  to  do  so,  he  was,  by 
virtue  of  his  extraordinary  capacity  and  prestige  and  the 
great  extent  of  his  writings,  the  foremost  and  exercised 
the  widest  influence. 

Philo  possessed  a  thorough  and  extensive  familiarity 
with  Greek  philosophy.  But  he  was  a  Jew.  He  believed 
in  the  truth  of  the  divine  oracles  delivered  to  his  fathers, 
and  he  was  convinced  that  the  wisdom  of  the  Greeks  was 
only  a  reflection  of  the  wisdom  of  Moses.  His  trained 
mind  perceived  very  clearly  that  much  of  what  was 
ascribed  to  the  Supreme  Being  in  the  Bible  was  both  im- 
possible and  unworthy  of  him.  But  this  was  only  so,  when 

1See  especially  Siegfried,  Philo  von  Alexandria  als  Ausleger  des 
Alien  Testament  an  sich  selbst  und  nach  seinem  geschichtlichen  Ein- 
fluss  betrachtet,  1875. 

2  The  prototype  seems  to  have  been  the  Spenta  Aramati. 


168  THE  PBOPHET  OF  NAZARETH 

the  words  were  understood  in  a  literal  sense.  By  the  alle- 
gorical method  he  was  able  to  see  in  them  the  same  truths 
that  were  in  different  language  expressed  by  the  Greek 
thinkers.  One  of  the  greatest  difficulties,  even  with  this 
method,  was  the  doctrine  of  creation.  It  was  through 
the  Logos  of  the  Stoics  and  the  ideas  of  Plato  that  he 
escaped  from  this  difficulty.  The  Logos  spermatikos,  the 
second  god,  the  manifestation  of  the  invisible  and  un- 
knowable Supreme  Being,  was  the  demiurge,  the  agent 
of  creation,  not  indeed  a  few  thousand  years  ago  in  the 
course  of  six  days,  but  in  the  constant  procession  of 
things.1  The  Logos  was  the  image  of  God,  the  reflection 
of  his  glory,  the  only  begotten  Son.  The  Logos  was  with 
God,  and  the  Logos  was  God.  Through  him  all  things 
were  made,  and  in  him  all  things  consist.  But  they  exist 
in  him  eternally  as  ideas,  and  only  as  such  become  known 
to  human  reason.  The  Logos  in  this  sense  may  be  said 
to  be  the  means  of  creation.  It  is  also  the  agency  of 
Providence,  a  conception  that  played  an  important  part 
in  the  Stoic  system,  and  the  instrument  of  revelation. 
The  Logos  is  the  light  which  illumines  every  man.  There 
is  a  distinction  between  Logos  endiathetos  and  Logos  pro- 
phorikos.2  Native  Jewish  thought  influenced  Philo  when 
he  described  the  Logos  as  angel,  servant,  high-priest  of 
God,  and  probably  also  when  he  emphasized  his  impor- 
tance as  leader  of  the  nations,  maker  and  director  of 
history.  It  has  been  much  discussed  whether  Philo 's 
Logos  is  a  personality  or  not.  None  of  the  attributes  of 
personality  seems  to  be  wanting.  Yet  a  personification 
is  often  very  intense  without  implying  the  belief  in  a 
personal  entity.  If  the  complexity  of  the  conception 
points  in  one  direction,  the  fondness  for  allegorizing 
points  in  another.  At  any  rate,  it  is  certain  that  Philo 
could  not  have  conceived  of  his  Logos  as  incarnated  in  a 
historic  human  personality. 

1  Philo  could  accept  no  doctrine  of  a  creatio  ex  nihilo.     See  Soulier, 
La  doctrine  du  Logos  chez  Philon,  1876,  p.  22. 

2  See  Grossman,  Questiones  Philoneae,  1829,  II,  26  ff . 


THE  LOGOS 


This  step  was  taken  for  the  first  time,  so  far  as  we  know, 
by  the  author  of  the  Gospel  according  to  John.  It  is 
not  to  be  denied  that  Christian  thinkers  had  before  his 
time  been  influenced  by  Philo.  This  can  scarcely  be 
affirmed  of  Paul.  There  is  nothing  specifically  Philonic 
in  his  doctrine  of  the  preexistence  of  the  soul  in  general, 
or  that  of  the  Messiah  in  particular,  in  the  designation  of 
the  Messiah  as  "the  heavenly  man,"  or  in  the  description 
of  the  Messiah  as  the  mediator;  and  the  idea  of  the  Mes- 
siah emptying  himself  and  becoming  a  man,  if  cherished 
by  Paul,  was  certainly  never  dreamed  of  by  Philo.  But 
the  Christology  of  the  Deutero-Pauline  epistles  to  the 
Colossians  and  the  Ephesians  uses  a  phraseology  that 
seems  to  be  reminiscent  of  Philo 's  language.  The  Epistle 
to  the  Hebrews  reveals  so  great  a  similarity  in  method, 
conceptions  and  style  that  a  familiarity  with  Philo  seems 
unquestionable.  All  the  more  remarkable  is  the  fact  that 
there  Jesus  is  never  identified  as  the  Logos.  The  only 
passage  in  the  Apocalypse  of  John  that  ascribes  the  title 
to  Jesus  is  xix,  13.  But  the  passage  has  long  been  recog- 
nized as  an  interpolation.  If  the  name  given  to  him,  and 
unknown  to  any  one  else,  is  the  Tetragrammaton,  as  some 
scholars  think,  the  author  of  the  interpolation  must  have 
written  at  a  date  much  later  than  that  of  the  Apocalypse. 

The  Fourth  Evangelist  was  intimately  acquainted  with 
Philonic  speculation.1  The  Alexandrian  philosopher  fur- 
nished him  not  only  with  ideas  but  also  with  his  charac- 
teristic phraseology.  Without  Philo  his  gospel  could 
never  have  been  written.  This  is  true  not  only  of  the 
Prologue  but  of  the  whole  work.  But  although  his  con- 
ception of  the  Logos  is  essentially  that  of  Philo,  it  has 
been  modified  by  two  important  facts:  his  Christian  ex- 

1This  has  been  strongly  emphasized  in  the  most  recent  works  by 
Jean  Keville,  Le  quatrieme  Evangile,  1901,  and  Grill,  Untersuchun- 
gen  uber  die  Entstehung  des  viertes  Evangeliums,  1902.  The  latter 
scholar  has  done  a  service  by  examining  the  relative  familiarity  of 
Philo  and  the  Fourth  Evangelist  with  Oriental,  especially  Indian, 
thought.  This  acquaintance  was,  of  course,  only  indirect. 


170  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZAEETH 

perience  and  his  Gnostic  speculation.  The  former  gave 
him  the  conviction  that  the  personality  of  Jesus  of  Naz- 
areth revealed  the  eternal  nature  of  the  Logos ;  the  latter 
furnished  him  with  the  ideas  of  an  emanation,  an  ap- 
pearance in  the  flesh,  and  a  redemption  through  gnosis, 
or  insight,  an  insight  which  was  characteristically  medi- 
ated through  ethical  sympathy  and  loyal  love,  rather  than 
through  intellectual  penetration.  The  result  was  that,  in 
the  Christological  development  based  upon  this  gospel, 
the  personality  of  the  eternal  Logos,  the  identity  of  the 
Logos  and  the  man  Jesus,  the  procession  of  the  Son  and 
the  Holy  Ghost,  the  incarnation,  and  the  necessity  to  sal- 
vation of  knowing  the  Father  and  the  Son  and  their 
mutual  relations,  fixed  themselves  in  Christian  thought. 

While,  so  far  as  our  present  knowledge  goes,  this  was 
the  first  clear  expression  of  the  incarnation  of  the  divine 
Logos  in  Jesus,  there  are  indications  that,  about  the  time 
when  the  Gospel  was  written,  other  minds  were  occupied 
by  Logos-speculations.  Valentinus  spoke  of  a  pair  of 
aeons,  Logos  and  Zoe,  emanating  from  the  pair  Bythos 
and  Sige.  Against  this  doctrine  Pseudo-Ignatius  took  the 
field,  declaring,1  that  "he  is  his  unseen  Logos  (Word) 
not  proceeding  from  Sige  (Silence)."2  The  Acts  of  Peter 
and  the  Acts  of  John  also  operate  with  the  conception  in 
language  resembling  at  times  that  of  the  Gospel.  But  the 
differences  are  also  very  marked.  When  the  wood  of  the 
cross  is  called  Logos,  it  is  evident  that  the  idea  of  an  incar- 
nation in  the  personality  of  Jesus  has  not  yet  become  fixed 
in  Christian  thought.  The  same  is  true  of  some  of  the 
Logia  found  at  Behnese.  "Lift  the  stone  and  thou  shalt 
find  me;  cleave  the  wood,  and  I  am  there."3  Such  fancies 

*Magnesians,  VIII,  2. 

2  The  emendation  of  the  text  proposed  by  Zahn,  Lightf oot  and  Har- 
nack,  by  striking  the  two  words  aidios  ouk  (  dtSios  OUK  )  has  no  war- 
rant in  the  manuscripts,  is  clearly  dictated  by  an  apologetic  motive, 
and  leaves  a  less  comprehensible  text.  The  author  of  the  Ignatian 
Epistle  to  the  Eomans  was  apparently  not  influenced  by  the  Logos 
doctrine,  though  in  viii,  2,  he  tends  in  that  direction. 

*Logion,  4. 


THE  LOGOS  171 


disappear    after    the    establishment    of    the    Johannine 
Christology. 

Although  Justin  Martyr  probably  wrote  his  First 
Apology  more  than  a  decade  later  than  the  appearance  of 
the  Fourth  Gospel,  it  must  still  be  pronounced  uncertain 
whether  he  was  familiar  with  it.  If  so,  he  evidently  did 
not  regard  it  as  authoritative.  If  not,  he  must  have 
reached  somewhat  similar  ideas  concerning  the  Logos 
independently,  because  he  addressed  himself  to  philoso- 
phers, was  acquainted  with  Gnosticism,  and  such  ideas 
were  in  the  air.  He  unquestionably  knew  Philo.  Con- 
cerning the  Logos  Justin  taught  that  he  was  created  as 
a  hypostasis  before  the  world  was  created,  that  through 
him  matter  itself  was  made,  and  that  it  became  flesh,  the 
birth  of  Jesus  from  the  virgin  being  his  work. 

In  the  apologies  of  Tatian,  Athenagoras,  Theophilus  of 
Antioch,  and  the  author  of  the  Epistle  to  Diognetus,  the 
doctrine  of  the  Logos  is  presented  without  important  new 
additions.  It  is  noticeable,  however,  that  the  Stoic  and 
Philonic  distinction  between  Logos  endiathetos  and  Logos 
prophorikos  attracts  more  and  more  attention,  and  that 
the  conception  of  the  Logos  as  indwelling  in  all  men  pre- 
vents the  doctrine  of  total  depravity  from  developing. 
The  doctrine  was  naturally  denned  in  controversies  with 
Gnostics,  Montanists  and  other  heretics  by  Irenaeus,  Ter- 
tullian,  Hippolytus,  Clement  of  Alexandria  and  Origen. 
Tertullian's  treatment  is  particularly  interesting,  as  in 
his  Latin  translation  of  the  term,  he  used  two  words  to 
express  its  different  phases:  verbum  and  ratio.  The 
Logos  idea  reached  its  highest  development  in  Origen. 
Those  great  convictions  for  which  he  was  condemned  by 
the  Church  were  closely  connected  with  it.  A  strong  and 
growing  element  in  the  Church  felt  the  danger  lurking  in 
a  philosophical  conception  whose  origin,  early  develop- 
ment and  natural  implications  could  not  be  obscured  to 
men  of  Greek  speech  familiar  with  their  great  thinkers. 
The  term  itself  had  a  tendency  to  breed  faith  in  human 
reason,  confidence  in  the  divine  spark  in  man,  and  oppo- 


172  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZAEETH 

sition  to  the  absolute  deity  of  Jesus  and  the  eternal 
damnation  of  the  unbelieving.  It  is  significant  that,  while 
the  Arians  freely  used  the  Logos  conception,  distinguish- 
ing as  the  philosophers  of  old  between  the  vitalizing,  the 
implicit,  and  the  outgoing  Logos,  Athanasius  protested 
against  the  term  Logos  spermatikos,  and  rejected  the  dis- 
tinction made  between  Logos  endiathetos  and  Logos  pro- 
phorikos.  At  the  Council  of  Nicaea  Eusebius  and  his 
party  proposed  the  formula:  "We  believe  in  the  Logos 
of  God."  Athanasius  and  his  party  objected,  favoring 
the  successful  formula:  "We  believe  in  the  Son  of 
God."1 

The  Logos  found  no  place  in  the  ecumenic  creeds.  It 
was  not  adopted  as  a  proper  name  in  the  Latin  language. 
It  was  translated  as  Word  in  the  modern  versions  with- 
out any  hint  of  its  philosophical  meaning.  To  most 
readers  of  the  Fourth  Gospel  it  had  no  pre-Christian  his- 
tory. A  modern  theologian2  closes  his  work  upon  this 
subject  by  expressing  the  conviction  that  "the  Protest- 
ant spirit  has  shown  the  Logos-theory  to  be  what  it  is :  a 
religious  dream  once  promising  thoughtful  men  a  solution 
of  the  problem  of  God  and  the  universe."  Ha  adds  that 
this  judgment  applies  only  to  its  religious  phase. 

It  is  readily  seen  that  the  problem  in  philosophy  which 
led  some  of  the  subtlest  thinkers  of  antiquity  to  elaborate 
the  Logos-speculation  still  remains  with  us,  and  that  the 
facts  suggested  by  the  term  must,  on  any  theory  of  the 
universe,  continue  to  claim  attention.  But  even  on  the 
religious  side  the  Logos  idea  has  not  been  an  idle  dream, 
but  rather  a  necessary  stage  in  the  development  of 
thought.  The  Semitic  nations  looked  upon  the  deity  as 
apart  from  the  world.  Judaism  before  its  contact  with 
Greek  thought  and  Islam  before  its  contact  with  Persian 
mysticism  rigidly  adhered  to  this  doctrine  of  the  divine 
transcendence.  In  India  and  Greece,  and  apparently  also 
in  Egypt,  the  conception  of  a  living  universe,  and  of  God 

1  Anathon  Aall,  Der  Logos,  II,  1899,  p.  470. 
8  Anathon  Aall,  1.  c.,  p.  481. 


THE  LOGOS  173 


as  its  life,  has  taken  deep  roots.  This  thought  of  the 
divine  immanence  could  not  be  appropriated  by  minds 
accustomed  to  the  idea  of  an  extra-mundane  divinity, 
without  the  introduction  of  an  intermediate  divine  being. 
The  incarnate  Logos  became  a  school-master  leading  men 
to  the  grander  conception  of  the  divine  immanence.  This 
was  a  historical  necessity.  For  pantheism,  always  ex- 
posed to  the  danger  of  effacing  lines  of  moral  demarca- 
tion, was  in  need  of  the  ethical  stimulus  of  an  intensely 
personal  relation  to  a  definite  and  exalted  ideal.  It  was 
this  deep-seated  demand  for  the  highest  conceivable  ideal 
that  led  to  the  definitions  of  the  "two  natures"  in  Christ. 
But  the  introduction  of  an  intermediate  deity  became 
harmful  by  translating  the  ideal  into  a  sphere  of  being 
conceived  as  possessing  an  essentially  different  nature, 
and  therefore  putting  it  beyond  the  reach  of  realization 
or  imitation.  In  the  advance  of  religious  thought,  the 
essential  oneness  of  the  Life  of  the  universe  is  perceived, 
and  the  moral  and  religious  influence  of  the  life  of  Jesus 
becomes  enhanced  by  the  recognition  of  its  truly  human 
character. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

THE  SECONDARY  SOURCES. 

Our  knowledge  of  the  life  and  teaching  of  Jesus  is  based 
solely  upon  the  testimony  of  early  Christian  literature. 
From  the  allusions  in  pagan  and  Jewish  writers  it  would  be 
possible  to  gain  some  idea,  though  a  very  imperfect  one,  of 
what  Christians  believed  concerning  their  Master  in  the  sec- 
ond century.  But  reliable  information  as  to  his  life  could 
scarcely  be  drawn  from  these  sources.  Were  there  no  Chris- 
tian documents,  a  careful  historian  might  be  inclined  to 
credit  the  statement  that  the  man  worshiped  as  a  god  by 
Christian  cult-communities  in  the  second  century  had  been 
put  to  death  in  Judaea  by  Pontius  Pilate  during  the  reign 
of  Tiberius.  But  there  would  be  room  for  doubt  whether 
this  statement  rested  upon  official  records  or  was  derived 
from  Christian  tradition;  it  would  be  impossible  to  deter- 
mine what,  if  anything,  had  been  contributed  by  "  Christus" 
to  the  religion  named  after  him ;  and  the  silence  of  the  great 
Jewish  writers  of  the  first  century  would  always  render  a 
decision  precarious. 

The  only  Roman  writer  of  the  first  century  in  whose 
works  one  would  naturally  look  for  an  allusion  to  Christian- 
ity is  Lucius  Annaeus  Seneca  (4  B.  C.-65  A.  D.).  If,  as  has 
been  generally  supposed,  there  were  disturbances  in  Rome 
in  which  Christians  were  implicated  already  at  the  time  of 
Claudius,  and  there  was  a  general  persecution  of  Christians 
by  Nero,  the  silence  of  the  distinguished  statesman,  the 
teacher  and  confidential  adviser  of  Nero,  would  be  peculiar. 
His  ethical,  religious  and  philosophical  views  were  so  closely 
akin  to  those  expressed  in  the  Pauline  literature  that  the 
similarity  attracted  attention  already  in  the  Early  Church. 
But  the  correspondence  between  Paul  and  Seneca  which 

174 


THE  SECONDAEY  SOURCES  175 

most  clearly  reveals  a  puzzled  consciousness  of  this  kinship 
is  a  Christian  forgery.1  There  is  no  reason  to  believe  that 
Seneca  ever  heard  of  Jesus  or  of  Paul.  The  passage  in 
which,  with  prophetic  indignation,  Juvenal2  describes  the 
sad  fate  of  those  who  attack  "omnipotent  rogues"  may 
allude  to  acts  of  Nero,  but  does  not  in  the  least  suggest  that 
it  was  Christians  who  were  thus  punished  for  crimen  laesae 
majestatis.  Among  the  discourses  of  Epictetus  published 
by  Arrian3  there  is  one  which  contains  a  mention  of 
"Galileans  who  by  custom  hold  what  cannot  be  proved  by 
reason  and  demonstration,  that  God  has  made  all  that  is  in 
the  world."  The  emphasis  upon  the  force  of  national  cus- 
tom and  tradition  renders  it  more  probable  that  Epictetus 
had  in  mind  an  ancient  people  like  the  Jews,  than  that  he 
thought  of  a  new  sect.  The  discourse  was  probably  deliv- 
ered in  Nicopolis,  Epirus,  in  109  A.  D.  In  an  oration  to 
the  Corinthians  probably  delivered  in  the  beginning  of  the 
reign  of  Trajan,  Dio  Chrysostom4  speaks  of  people  who 
reject  both  philosophers  and  gods.  It  is  not  clear,  however, 
that  he  had  Christians  in  mind. 

The  first  reference  to  Christianity  in  a  Roman  writer 
seems  to  be  found  in  a  letter  by  Pliny  the  Younger  to  Tra- 
jan.5 The  genuineness  of  this  letter  has  been  questioned  by 
many  scholars,  but  on  insufficient  grounds.6.  It  was  prob- 

1This  correspondence  was  known  to  Jerome  and  Augustine  and  is 
found  in  MSS.  of  Seneca's  works  since  the  ninth  century.  See  Baur, 
Seneca  und  Paulus  in  Zeitschrift  fur  Wissenschaftliche  Theologie, 
1858,  p.  463  ff.  Cf .  E.  Westerburg,  Der  Ursprung  der  Sage  doss 
Seneca  Christ  gewesen  sei,  1881,  p.  41  ff. 

2  Saturnalia,  I,  155  ff. 

•IV,  7. 

*  Corinthiacae  Orationes,  xxxvii. 

*Epistolae,  X,  96. 

8  Semler,  in  1788,  expressed  doubts  about  the  genuineness  of  X,  96 
and  97.  Bruno  Bauer  and  Manchot  assumed  interpolations.  The 
whole  collection  of  Epistles  has  been  questioned  by  some  scholars. 
This  is  the  position  of  Van  Manen,  who,  with  some  force,  has  urged 
the  difficulty  of  assuming  124  letters  to  have  passed  between  Pliny 
and  Trajan  in  18  months  and  of  the  governor  troubling  the  emperor 
with  so  many  trifles.  Cf.  De  Gids,  1890,  p.  290  ff.  On  the  other 


176  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZARETH 

ably  written  in  112  A.  D.  In  it  Pliny  as  governor  of 
Bithynia  asks  for  instructions  in  regard  to  the  Christians. 
He  has  never  been  present  at  any  examinations  of  Chris- 
tians, and  is  doubtful  whether  they  should  be  punished 
without  any  discrimination  as  to  age  or  manifest  willing- 
ness to  abandon  their  practices,  and  whether  the  name  itself 
should  be  punished,  or  only  the  crimes  found  connected  with 
it.  From  some  apostates  he  had  learned  that  the  Christians 
1 1  were  accustomed  to  assemble  on  a  stated  day,  before  light, 
and  to  sing  responsively  a  hymn  to  Christ,  as  to  a  god,  and 
to  bind  themselves  by  an  oath,  not  to  any  wickedness,  but 
not  to  commit  theft,  nor  robbery,  nor  adultery,  nor  prevari- 
cation, nor  denial  of  a  pledge  received,  whereupon  they 
would  separate,  and  then  come  together  again  for  a  meal 
eaten  in  common. "  Trajan  directed  that  they  should  be 
punished  when  convicted  of  being  Christians,  upon  proper 
trial,  but  that  they  should  not  be  hunted  out.1  The  phrase 
"as  to  a  god"  probably  shows  that  Pliny  understood 
"Christus"  to  be  a  man.  There  is  no  intimation  of  any 
knowledge  on  his  part  of  the  life  and  teaching  of  Jesus. 

Soon  after  115  A.  D.  Tacitus  wrote  that  part  of  his  his- 
torical work  which  has  been  designated  The  Annals.  In  it2 
he  mentions  the  case  of  Pomponia  Graecina,  who  was  ac- 
cused of  a  "foreign  superstition"  in  58  A.  D.  This  has 
been  supposed  by  some  scholars  to  be  a  reference  to  the 
Christian  religion.  But  Hasenclever3  has  rendered  it  prob- 
able that  Judaism  is  meant.  In  describing  Nero's  reign, 
Tacitus4  speaks  of  the  persecution  of  Christians.  His  ac- 

hand,  it  is  extremely  difficult  to  imagine  any  Christian  writer  to  have 
gone  to  the  trouble  of  forging  so  large  a  number  of  epistles  for  the 
purpose  of  introducing  a  decree  which  is  anything  but  an  edict  of  tol- 
eration. See  on  this  point  especially  Steck,  Jahrbiicher  fur  protestan- 
tische  Theologie,  1891,  p.  645  ff. 

1  Plinii  Epistolae,  x,  97. 

2  Ab  excessu  divi  Augusti,  xiii,  32. 

*  JdhrMcher  fur  protestantische  Theologie,  1882,  p.  47  ff . 

*  I.  c.,  XV,  44.     There  is  no  reason  to  doubt  that  this  chapter  was 
written  by  Tacitus.     There  may  be  a  question  of  the  accuracy  of  his 
information. 


THE  SECONDAEY  SOURCES  177 

count,  however,  raises  some  grave  questions.  Tacitus  sug- 
gests that  to  turn  the  suspicion  away  from  himself,  Nero 
falsely  accused  the  Christians  of  having  caused  the  great 
fire  at  Rome  in  64  A.  D.  The  Christians,  he  says,  were 
named  after  Christus,  who  in  the  reign  of  Tiberius  had  been 
put  to  death  by  Pontius  Pilate.  Having  been  repressed  at 
first,  this  execrable  superstition  had  broken  out  afresh,  not 
only  in  Judaea,  but  also  in  Rome,  whither  all  atrocious  and 
shameless  things  find  their  way  from  different  parts  of  the 
world.  Those  that  were  first  arrested  confessed  under  tor- 
ture, and  then  a  large  crowd  were  convicted,  not  indeed  of 
having  caused  the  fire,  but  of  hatred  of  the  human  race. 
The  official  charge  must  of  course  have  been  that  they  had 
set  fire  to  the  city.  What  "they  confessed"  cannot  have 
been  that  they  were  Christians,  but  that  they  had  caused  the 
fire.  Of  this  charge,  however,  the  great  crowd  were  not 
found  guilty,  but  of  "odium  generis  humani."  This  can 
scarcely  have  been  a  crime  recognized  by  a  Roman  court. 
Schmiedel1  is  no  doubt  right  in  deeming  it  possible  "that 
the  religion  of  the  accused  did  not  come  into  question  at  all, 
and  that  Tacitus  and  Suetonius  have,  unhistorically,  carried 
back  the  name  Christiani  from  their  own  time  into  that  of 
Nero."  Curiously  enough,  Suetonius2  does  not  at  all  say 
that  the  Christians  were  accused  of  starting  the  fire;  and 
Juvenal3  mentions  neither  incendiarism  nor  Christian  be- 
liefs and  practices  as  the  occasion  of  those  barbarous  punish- 
ments of  which  these  writers  seem  to  have  had  a  tradition. 
But  even  if  there  is  reasonable  doubt  in  regard  to  the 
Neronic  persecution  of  Christians,  and  the  unfavorable  esti- 
mate of  them  by  Tacitus  is  likely  to  have  been  derived  from 
his  own  observation,  or  the  accounts  of  contemporaries, 
rather  than  from  a  knowledge  of  their  history,  the  question 
still  remains,  whether  he  may  not  have  gleaned  from  official 
reports  the  fact  that  Jesus  was  put  to  death  in  the  reign  of 

1  Encyclopaedia  Biblica,  article  Christian,  the  name  of,  vol.  I,  col. 
758. 

2  De  vita  Caesarum,  VI,  16.     This  work  was  written  ca.  120  A.  D. 
•I.  c. 

13 


178  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZAEETH 

Tiberius,  while  Pontius  Pilate  was  procurator  of  Judaea. 
In  the  present  state  of  our  knowledge,  it  is  quite  impossible 
to  say,  whether  a  report  of  the  crucifixion  of  Jesus  was  sent 
to  Rome  by  Pontius  Pilate,  and  was  seen  in  the  archives  there 
by  Tacitus,  or  whether  the  historian  gathered  this  piece  of 
information  from  some  Christian  source.  The  probability 
of  such  a  report  depends  upon  the  very  uncertain  part 
Pilate  had  in  the  tragedy,1  and  the  importance  he  attached 
to  it.  There  is  little  reason  to  believe  that  the  Acts  of 
Pilate  referred  to  by  Justin  differed  essentially  from  the 
late  forgeries  known  to  us  by  that  name. 

Suetonius2  relates  that  Claudius  (41-54  A.  D.)  expelled 
the  Jews  from  Rome  because  of  a  tumult  they  had  made 
under  the  leadership  of  one  Chrestus.  As  this  historian  em- 
ploys the  term  " Christiani"  in  describing  the  "new  and 
malicious  superstition"  against  which  he  had  heard  that 
Nero  used  such  drastic  measures,  there  is  no  reason  to  sup- 
pose that  he  confused  "Chrestus,"  the  Jewish  agitator  in 
Rome  under  Claudius,  with  "Christus,"  the  prophet  ap- 
pearing in  Judaea  under  Tiberius.  But  neither  can  it  be 
affirmed  that  there  was  a  Roman  demagogue  by  the  name  of 
Chrestus  in  the  time  of  Claudius.  There  may  have  been 
some  confusion  in  the  written  sources  or  tradition  upon 
which  Suetonius  drew.  Acts  xviii,  1,  2,  throws  no  light 
upon  the  subject. 

Overbeck3  has  conclusively  shown  that  a  number  of  edicts 
of  toleration  ascribed  to  Hadrian  and  the  Antonines  are 
Christian  forgeries.  The  alleged  letter  of  Hadrian  to 
Minucius  Fundanus  is  no  more  likely  to  be  genuine  than  the 
others.  The  contrast  to  Trajan's  rescript  is  very  marked. 
Marcus  Aurelius,  in  his  Meditations,  refers  disapprovingly 
to  the  eagerness  for  martyrdom  shown  by  the  Christians.4 
It  is  possible  that  Apuleius  in  163  A.  D.  gives  a  description 
of  Christians,  in  terms  indicating  bitter  prejudice,  though 

1  See  Ch.  X. 

2 1.  c.,  V,  25. 

*  Studien  zur  Geschichte  der  alien  Kirche,  II,  1875. 

4  Meditationes,  XI,  3, 


THE  SECONDABY  SOUECES  179 

he  does  not  mention  the  name.1  Lucian,  of  Samosata,  in 
De  morte  Peregrini,  written  in  178  A.  D.,  shows  some  ac- 
quaintance with  Christianity.  Concerning  the  founder  of 
this  faith  he  knew  that  he  was  crucified  in  Palestine.  It  is 
not  improbable  that  in  his  description  of  Peregrinus  he  had 
to  some  extent  the  legend  of  Ignatius  in  mind.2  He  also 
appears  to  have  been  familiar  with  the  Apocalypse  of  John.8 
Celsus,  in  his  "True  Account,"*  written  in  178  A.  D.,  seems 
to  have  derived  his  information  partly  from  the  Gospels, 
including  the  Fourth  Gospel,  partly  from  conversation  with 
Jews.  From  the  latter  source  he  apparently  gleaned  no  ad- 
ditional fact,  but  only  the  current  Jewish  interpretation  of 
the  narratives  given  in  the  Gospels.  It  is  characteristic  of 
his  attitude  that  he  accepted  the  accounts  of  miracles 
wrought  by  Jesus,  though  explaining  them  as  performed  by 
magic,  and  ascribed  to  him  the  teaching  of  the  Fourth  Gos- 
pel as  well  as  the  Synoptic  representation,  while  he  rejected 
as  legends  the  stories  clustering  about  his  birth,  death  and 
resurrection.  He  does  not  add  a  single  fact,  drawn  from 
any  independent  source,  to  what  may  be  gathered  from 
Christian  literature. 

The  most  significant  fact  in  extant  Jewish  writings  of  the 
first  two  centuries  is  the  silence  of  Philo  and  Josephus.5 
Philo  was  still  living  at  the  time  of  the  accession  of  Claudius 
in  41  A.  D.  He  visited  Palestine  in  connection  with  his 
embassy  to  Gaius  Caligula  in  40  A.  D.,  and  was  intimately 
acquainted  with  the  religious  life  of  Judaea.  He  was  fa- 
miliar with  the  various  religious  parties,  Pharisees,  Sad- 
ducees  and  Essenes,  but  he  apparently  had  no  knowledge 
either  of  Jesus  or  of  the  Christian  Church.  Still  more  re- 

1  Metamorphoses,  IX. 

2  This  idea  has  been  expressed  by  several  scholars.    Pfleiderer  in  the 
second  edition  of  his  Urchristentum  (1902)  regards  it  as  an  evidence 
of  the  genuineness  of  seven  of  the  Ignatian  epistles  which  he  dates 
ca.  130  A.  D.     In  reality  it  would  only  show  the  development  of  the 
Ignatius  legend  before  178  A.  D. 

'  Vera  Historia,  II,  6-12. 

4  See  the  excerpts  in  Origen,  Contra  Celsum. 

*  An  explanation  of  this  is  suggested  on  page  31. 


180  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZAEETE 


markable  is  the  absence  of  any  allusion  to  Christianity  in 
the  works  of  Josephus.  The  historian  of  his  people  lived 
both  in  Galilee  and  in  Judaea,  was  in  his  youth  a  seeker 
after  truth  wherever  it  seemed  to  offer  itself,  became  a  mem- 
ber of  the  Pharisaic  party,  and  described,  in  his  historical 
works,  not  only  the  political  fortunes  of  the  Jews,  but  also 
to  some  extent  their  religious  development,  and  carried  his 
accounts  down  toward  the  end  of  his  own  life.  His  "Jewish 
War"  was  written  in  its  Greek  form  between  75  and  79  A. 
D.,  his  "Antiquities"  in  94  A.  D.,  his  work  "Against 
Apion"  ca.  100  A.  D.,  and  his  "Autobiography"  soon  after. 
These  works  have  been  preserved  by  the  Church,  and  not  by 
the  Synagogue.  Christian  readers  and  copyists  could  but 
note  with  astonishment  the  fact  that  Josephus  had  nothing 
to  say  about  Jesus.  Hence  they  supplied  the  text  with 
more  or  less  clumsy  interpolations,  as  patristic  testimony 
and  late  manuscripts  show.  A  passage  inserted  in  An- 
tiquities xviii,  63,  64  reads  as  follows :  ' '  At  this  time  Jesus 
appears,  a  wise  man,  if  indeed  it  is  proper  to  call  him  a  man. 
For  he  was  a  performer  of  marvelous  works,  a  teacher  of 
men  who  receive  the  truth  with  joy,  and  lie  drew  to  himself 
many  Jews  and  also  many  Greeks.  He  was  the  Messiah. 
And  when  Pilate  had  punished  him  by  crucifixion,  on  the 
accusation  of  our  foremost  men,  those  who  had  loved  him  at 
first  did  not  cease  to  love  him.  For  he  appeared  to  them 
alive  again  after  three  days,  the  divine  prophets  having 
predicted  this  and  a  thousand  other  wonderful  things  about 
him.  Even  now  the  people  named  after  him  Christians  has 
not  ceased  to  exist."  It  is  admitted  on  all  hands  that 
Josephus  cannot  have  written  this  paragraph  as  it  stands. 
A  number  of  scholars  have  maintained  that  it  contains  a 
genuine  nucleus.  There  is  no  agreement,  however,  as  to 
what  the  historian  could  have  written;  and  the  few  words 
that  are  left  must  themselves  be  subjected  to  conjectural 
emendations  or  fresh  modern  interpolations  to  make  them  at 
all  plausible.1  It  has  therefore  been  the  growing  conviction 

1  For  such  attempts  see  particularly  Gieseler,  Kirchengeschichte,  4te 
Ausgabe,  1844-1848,  p.  81;  Wieseler,  Jdhr~bucher  fur  deutsche  Theol- 


THE  SECONDAEY  SOUECES  181 

of  scholars  since  the  sixteenth  century  that  the  entire  pas- 
sage is  the  work  of  a  Christian  hand.  Origen  did  not  find 
it  in  his  text  of  Josephus;  but  it  had  been  written  before 
Eusebius  composed  his  Ecclesiastical  History  ca.  325  A.  D. 
That  the  reference  to  "the  brother  of  Jesus  who  is  called  the 
Christ,  James  by  name"1  is  also  a  Christian  interpolation,  is 
rendered  probable  by  the  fact  that  Origen  found  in  his  text 
of  Josephus  a  passage  concerning  James  not  extant  in  our 
manuscripts  and  clearly  of  Christian  origin.  Some 
scholars  have  assumed  that  the  original  text  contained  an 
allusion  to  Jesus  so  objectionable  to  Christians  that  it  was 
removed.  There  is  no  basis  for  such  an  assumption.  The 
silence  of  Josephus  does  not  necessarily  imply  ignorance  on 
his  part  of  Christianity,  but  only  that  to  his  mind  it  did  not 
possess  sufficient  importance,  either  politically  or  philosoph- 
ically, to  deserve  special  mention,  or  that  he  thought  it  un- 
wise to  refer  to  the  subject.  We  have  the  testimony  of 
Photius2  that  Justus  of  Tiberius  in  his  historical  works 
written  toward  the  end  of  the  first  century  likewise  made  no 
mention  of  Jesus  or  Christianity. 

In  the  Mishna,  edited  by  K.  Jehuda  ca.  200  A.  D.,  the 
Palestinian  Talmud,  edited  in  the  time  of  R.  Jose  bar 
Zabda  ca.  350  A.  D.,  the  Babylonian  Talmud,  edited  by 
Rab  Abina  and  Rab  Jose  ca.  500  A.  D.,  as  well  as  in 
other  early  Jewish  works  of  uncertain  date,  there  are  oc- 
casional references  to  Jesus  and  the  Christians,  designated 
as  Minim.  No  authorities  of  the  first  century,  however,  are 

ogie,  1878,  p.  86  ff.;  Volkmar,  Jesus  Nazarenus,  1882,  p.  335  ff.; 
Eeinach,  Bevue  des  etudes  juives,  1897,  p.  1.  The  spuriousness  of 
the  entire  passage  has  been  shown  especially  by  Gerlach,  Die  Weissa 
gungen  des  Alien  Testaments  in  den  Schriften  des  Flavins  Josephus 
und  das  angebliche  Zeugniss  von  Christo,  1863;  Keim,  Geschichte 
Jesu  von  Nazara,  I,  1867,  p.  11  ff. ;  Loman,  Theologisch  Tijdschrift, 
1882,  p.  593  ff.;  Niese,  De  testimonio  Christiano  quod  est  apud  Jose- 
phum,  1893-1894 ;  Schiirer,  Geschichte  des  judischen  Volkes  im  Zeital- 
ter  Jesu  Christi,  Leipzig,  1901,  vol.  I.  p.  544  ff . 

1  Antiquitates,  XX,  200. 

3  Bibliotheca,  col.  33. 


182  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZAEETH 

quoted  as  mentioning  either.1  It  is  in  the  reign  of  Trajan 
that  R.  Joshua  ben  Hananiah2  speaks  of  Minim  and  R. 
Eliezer  quoted  a  legal  decision  of  Jesus  on  the  authority  of 
one  of  his  disciples.3  According  to  R.  Eliezer 's  informant, 
the  question  had  arisen  whether  it  was  permissible  to  bring 
money  gained  by  prostitution  into  the  temple,  and  Jesus 
had  decided  in  the  affirmative,  citing  Micha  i,  7  and  adding 
"it  has  come  from  uncleanness  and  it  shall  go  to  the  place 
of  uncleanness."  The  genuineness  of  this  saying  is  highly 
improbable.  But  there  is  good  Talmudic  authority  for  the 
view  that  in  the  reign  of  Trajan  a  marked  hostility  existed 
between  Jews  and  Jewish  Christians  (Ebionites,  Naz- 
araeans4)  ;  while  this  cannot  be  shown  to  have  existed  before 
his  time.  In  the  decades  immediately  preceding  the  publi- 
cation of  Celsus's  book,  the  conception  of  Jesus  presented 
with  variations  in  the  Talmudic  literature  must  have  shaped 
itself.  There  is  not  the  slightest  sign  that  it  was  based  on 
any  other  sources  than  Christian  writings.  The  peculiarity 
of  this  Jewish  interpretation  seems  to  be  due,  partly  to  an 
honest  attempt  to  discover  the  historic  truth  behind  what 
was  recognized  as  legends,  partly  to  an  instinctive  horror 
of  the  new  direction  Christian  thought  was  taking,  partly 
to  a  sense  of  danger  to  Judaism  itself.  One  cannot  doubt 
that  Jewish  teachers  honestly  believed  the  story  of  the 
virgin-birth  to  be  designed  to  cover  up  the  disgrace  of  an 
illegitimate  birth,  that  the  reported  flight  to  Egypt  indicated 
the  place  where  Jesus  acquired  his  extraordinary  power,  that 
the  miracles  ascribed  to  him  were  actually  wrought  by 
magic,  that  his  intimacy  with  women  implied  immoral  rela- 

1  The  silence  of  R.  Jochanan  ben  Zakkai  is  most  remarkable,  as  he 
frequently  disputed  with  Sadducees    (Jadaim,  IV,  6),  Boethusians 
(Menachot,  65),  and  Pagans  (Chullin,  27,  Belcoroth,  8). 

2  Shabbath,  116a  al. 

*  Aboda  Zara,  16b,  17a;  Koheleth  rabba  to  I,  8;  Josephta  Chullin, 
ii,  24. 

4  Joel,  Slicke  in  die  Eeligionsgeschichte,  II,  1893,  p.  91  ff.,  is  no 
doubt  right  in  finding  "the  house  of  the  Ebionites"  and  "the  house 
of  the  Nazaraeans,  referred  to  in  Shabbath,  116a,  under  the  changed 
form  "house  of  Abidan"  and  "house  of  Nazarfa," 


THE  SECONDARY  SOURCES  183 

tions,  that  his  death  as  a  blasphemer  was  brought  about  in 
accordance  with  the  prescribed  methods  of  judicial  pro- 
cedure. The  deification  of  Jesus,  and  the  practices  of  some 
Christian  churches,  including  apparently  the  use  of  images, 
could  only  be  looked  upon  with  alarm.  As  an  ever  increas- 
ing number  of  Jews  were  driven  away  from  Palestine  and 
scattered  in  the  Koman  world,  there  was  danger  both  of  their 
being  affected  by  the  tendencies  of  thought  prevailing 
among  Hellenistic  Jews  and  of  their  abandoning  ancestral 
customs  under  the  pressure  of  Koman  persecution. 

Neither  Pagan  nor  Jewish  sources  give  us  any  reliable  in- 
formation concerning  Jesus.  Such  knowledge  as  we  find 
can  everywhere  be  traced  to  Christian  sources,  with  the 
possible  exception  of  a  statement  by  Tacitus  which  may 
have  been  derived  from  official  Roman  records.  But  the 
bulk  of  early  Christian  literature  does  not  yield  much  more. 
The  Apologies  of  Quadratus  (ca.  125),  Aristides  (ca.  129), 
Aristo  of  Pella  (ca.  135),  Justin  (ca.  150)  and  Tatian  (ca. 
170)  present  the  views  of  Christian  thinkers  in  the  second 
century;  but  aside  from  an  occasional  saying  of  Jesus  de- 
rived from  some  lost  gospel  and  at  least  worthy  of  consider- 
ation, they  throw  no  light  on  the  teachiDg  of  Jesus.  Still 
less  information  is  to  be  obtained  from  such  works  as  The 
Teaching  of  the  Twelve,  a  combination  of  a  Jewish  writing 
of  uncertain  date,  called  The  Two  Ways,  and  a  Christian 
hortatory  address,  written  ca.  150  A.  D.,  The  Memoirs  of 
Hegesippus,  completed  ca.  180  A.  D.,  the  Treatise  on  the 
Resurrection  by  Athenagoras,  of  about  the  same  age,  and 
the  fragments  of  Gnostic  commentaries  and  dissertations 
that  have  come  down  to  us.  Valuable  as  are  the  excerpts 
of  Papias,  they  do  not  add  a  single  reliable  fact  to  the 
knowledge  we  glean  from  the  Synoptic  Gospels.  Among  the 
apocalyptic  writings  of  the  Early  Church  the  most  impor- 
tant seem  to  be  the  Revelation  of  John,  the  Revelation  of 
Peter,  the  Revelation  of  Paul,  the  Shepherd  of  Hermas,  and 
the  Sibylline  Oracles ;  but  it  may  be  doubted  whether  any 
Jewish  apocalypse  was  preserved  by  the  Church  without 
some  interpolation,  correction,  or  accidental  change.  Such 


184  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZAEETH 

alterations  of  the  original  text  are  plainly  visible  in  the 
apocalypses  of  Baruch  and  Ezra,  in  the  Ethiopia  Enoch,  in 
the  Testaments  of  the  Twelve  Patriarchs,  in  the  Testament 
of  Abraham,  and  in  the  Jewish  Sibylline  books.  None  of 
the  Christian  Sibyllists  seems  to  have  lived  before  the  sec- 
ond century.  Hernias  apparently  wrote  his  Shepherd 
about  150  A.  D.  The  Kevelation  of  Peter  was  probably 
composed  not  much  later.  It  is  particularly  important  for 
the  light  it  throws  upon  the  influence  of  Orphic  speculation 
on  the  development  of  Christian  eschatology.  It  was  highly 
esteemed  at  the  end  of  the  second  century,  as  is  evident  from 
the  fact  that  in  the  Muratorianum  it  is  mentioned  side  by 
side  with  the  Eevelation  of  John.  Concerning  the  Revela- 
tion of  Paul  little  is  known. 

The  Tubingen  school  regarded  the  Revelation  of  John  as 
the  genuine  work  of  John,  the  son  of  Zebedee,  the  immediate 
disciple  of  Jesus,  and  consequently  as  a  document  of  the 
primitive  Jewish  Christianity.  This  was  a  serious  mistake, 
as  practically  all  independent  students  recognize  to-day.  In 
its  present  form,  this  apocalypse  cannot  be  older  than  the 
last  years  of  the  reign  of  Domitian.  This  has  been  shown 
quite  conclusively  by  Harnack.1  Nevertheless,  Baur  was 
right  in  feeling  the  presence  here  and  there  of  a  distinctly 
Jewish  spirit.  The  explanation  lies  in  the  fact  that  some 
sections,  notably  chapters  xi-xiii,  xvii-xviii,  seem  to  have 
been  derived  from  a  previously  existing  Jewish  apocalypse. 
From  different  points  of  view  this  conviction  has  been 
reached  by  Vischer,  Harnack,  Gunkel,  Wellhausen,  Pfleid- 
erer  and  others.  This  Jewish  apocalypse  probably  belongs 
to  the  time  immediately  before  the  conquest  of  Jerusalem 
in  70  A.  D.  Wellhausen  is  probably  right  in  assigning  to 
the  same  period  the  little  Apocalypse  of  Jesus  embodied  in 
the  Synoptic  Gospels  (Matth.  xxiv,  Mark  xiii,  Luke  xxi). 
It  may  have  formed  a  part  of  the  work  quoted  in  Luke  xi, 
49  as  "The  Wisdom  of  God."  Whether  this  was  originally 
a  Christian  product,  may  be  doubted.  At  any  rate,  a  long 

1  GescUchte  der  Altchristlichen  Literatur,  II,  1897,  p.  245  ff.  It  i8 
probable,  however,  that  there  are  later  additions. 


THE  SECONDAEY  SOUECES  185 

period  must  have  passed,  as  Wellhausen  has  recognized,  be- 
fore the  reference  of  the  personified  Wisdom  to  the  murder 
of  Zechariah  ben  Barachiah,  which  occurred  during  the 
siege  of  Jerusalem,  can  have  been  placed  upon  the  lips  of 
Jesus.  A  careful  criticism  can  no  more  use  this  Synoptic 
Apocalypse  than  the  Revelation  of  John  as  a  source  of  the 
teaching  of  Jesus  or  as  coming  from  his  immediate  disciples. 

Old  Christian  literature  was  rich  in  Acts  of  the  Apostles. 
There  were  Gnostic  Acts  of  the  Apostles,  Ebionitish  Acts  of 
the  Apostles,  Travels  of  Peter,  Travels  of  Paul,  Acts  of 
Paul  and  Thecla,  Travels  of  James,  Travels  of  John,  and 
others.  The  Leucine  Acts  of  John  are  especially  inter- 
esting, because  they  show  the  wider  prevalence  of  the  pe- 
culiar type  of  thought  found  in  the  Fourth  Gospel.  An 
appreciative  estimate  of  this  literature  has  recently  been 
given  by  Pfleiderer.1  It  is  not  pretended  that  any  of  these 
works  adds  to  our  knowledge  of  Jesus,  or  of  the  thought  of 
his  immediate  disciples.  The  canonical  Acts  brings  us  far 
nearer  to  the  beginnings.  The  compiler  of  this  work  intro- 
duces himself  in  the  preface  as  identical  with  the  author 
of  the  Third  Gospel.  Style  and  literary  methods  are  in 
harmony  with  this  claim.  The  Tubingen  school  found  in 
his  presentation  of  history  a  conscious  purpose  to  cloak  over 
the  differences  between  Paul  and  Jewish  Christianity.  If 
the  genuineness  of  the  Pauline  epistles  to  the  Galatians,  the 
Corinthians  and  the  Romans  is  admitted,  no  other  conclusion 
seems  at  first  possible,  so  marked  is  the  contrast  between  the 
Paul  of  these  epistles  and  the  Paul  of  Acts.  On  the  other 
hand,  those  who,  like  Bruno  Bauer,  Loman,  Steck  and  Van 
Manen,  think  it  impossible  to  ascribe  these  epistles  to  Paul, 
and  find  in  Acts  a  representation  of  this  apostle  that  is 
nearer  to  the  historic  reality  than  the  radical  of  the  epistles, 
are  as  far  from  making  the  compiler  an  impartial  and 
thoroughly  reliable  historian.  Independent  scholars  are 
now  all  agreed  as  to  the  inability  of  the  author  to  place  him- 
self objectively  in  the  period  he  describes,  and  recognize 
that  this  failure  is  due,  not  so  much  to  any  definite  purpose 

1  Das  Urchristentum2,  1902. 


186  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZARETH 

or  tendency,  as  to  the  natural  prepossessions  of  his  age,  and 
his  distance  in  time  from  the  events  related.     Hence  he  was 
unable  to  comprehend  the  nature  of  the  early  gift  of  ' '  speak- 
ing with  tongues/7  and  caused  the  apostles  to  preach  in 
languages  they  had  not  acquired,  ascribed  to  them  all  kinds 
of  miracles,  failed  to  appreciate  the  conflicts  that  once  must 
have  raged,  endowed  Peter  with  the  spirit  of  Paul,  and 
made  Paul  walk  about  with  a  shaven  head  to  show  the 
myriads  of  believers  in  Jerusalem  his  zeal  for  the  Law. 
He  probably  wrote  in  the  beginning  of  the  second  century. 
But  it  is  also  generally  admitted  to-day  that  he  used 
earlier  sources.     The  first  person  plural  found  exclusively 
in  some  sections  reveals  one  of  these.     This  "We-Source" 
rightly  ranks  among  the  earliest  of  our  New  Testament 
writings.     There  is  no  improbability  in  the  assumption  that 
it  was  written  by  one  of  the  companions  of  Paul,  and  the 
most  plausible  theory  is  that  he  was  none  else  than  Luke, 
to  whom  for  this  reason  the  whole  book  was  ascribed,  and  on 
account  of  the  preface  consequently  also  the  Third  Gospel. 
While  this  source  gives  us  some  information  of  the  most 
authentic  character  concerning  Paul,  it  adds  nothing,  how- 
ever, to  our  knowledge  of  Jesus.     Van  Manen,  who  regards 
Luke  as  the  author  of  the  ' '  We-Source,' '  suggests  that  in 
the  first  part  of  his  work  the  compiler  used  two  other 
sources,  one  being  the  "Acts  of  Peter,"  and  the  other  the 
"Acts  of  Paul."1    Neither  of  them  has  been  preserved  in 
the  original  form,  and  there  is  every  indication  that  the 
compiler  has  used  them  with  the  same  freedom  of  modifica- 
tion and  expansion  that  characterizes  his  gospel,  but  also 
with  the  same  retention  of  early  and  valuable  features  of 
tradition.     Thus  it  is  manifest  that  many  legends  cluster 
about  the  nucleus  of  fact  in  his  account  of  the  establishment 
of  the  church  in  Jerusalem,  and  that  it  would  be  hazardous 
to  affirm  that  the  time  indicated  is  more  correct  than  the 
manner  described.     Yet  there  is  no  reason  to  doubt  that  the 
conviction  that  Jesus  had  been  raised  from  the  dead,  and 

*De  Handelingen  der  Apostelen,  1890;  Handleiding  voor  de  oud- 
christelijTce  letterkunde,  1900. 


THE  SECONDARY  SOURCES  187 

would  return  on  the  clouds  to  restore  the  kingdom  to  Israel 
some  time  after  his  death,  brought  together  a  group  of  be- 
lievers in  Jerusalem  who,  under  the  influence  of  his  spirit, 
shared  with  one  another  what  they  had,  and  lived  in  accord- 
ance with  that  word  of  the  Master  which  has  been  preserved 
only  in  Acts :  "It  is  more  blessed  to  give  than  to  receive. ' ' 

The  epistles  of  the  "apostolic  fathers/'  Barnabas, 
Clement,  Ignatius,  Polycarp,  are  important  for  the  testi- 
mony they  bear  concerning  the  religious  ideas  or  eccle- 
siastical institutions  of  the  period  in  which  they  were  written, 
and  also  for  the  indications  they  give,  by  direct  quotation 
or  allusion,  of  the  Christian  writings  then  extant.  It  is 
recognized  by  critics  of  all  schools  that  the  epistle  of  Bar- 
nabas cannot  have  been  written  by  this  companion  of  Paul, 
but  was  composed,  probably  in  Alexandria,  in  the  reign  of 
Hadrian  (117-138  A.  D.).  A  number  of  writings  are  as- 
cribed to  Clement  of  Home.  The  most  important  among 
these  are  two  epistles  to  the  church  in  Corinth,  the  Homilies 
and  the  Recognitions.  It  is  universally  admitted ,  that  the 
Homilies  and  Recognitions  are  later  than  the  epistles,  and 
of  different  authorship.  The  anti-Pauline  "Sermons  of 
Peter, "  one  of  the  sources  used,  which  is  carefully  to  be  dis- 
tinguished from  the  Pauline  "Preaching  of  Peter/'  may 
have  been  written  in  its  earliest  form  about  135  A.  D. 
What  other  sources  were  employed,  what  the  relation  of  the 
Homilies  to  the  Recognitions  is,  and  whether  these  works, 
known  to  Origen,  were  compiled  in  the  second  or  in  the  be- 
ginning of  the  third  century,  cannot,  in  the  present  state  of 
the  question,  be  decided.  The  second  epistle  of  Clement  is 
also  generally  regarded  as  pseudonymous,  and  Harnack1  is 
probably  right  in  considering  it  as  a  sermon  preached  not 
long  before  170  A.  D. 

The  first  epistle  of  Clement  does  not  itself  claim  to  be  a 
work  of  any  man,  but  to  be  an  epistle  of  the  church  of  Rome 
to  the  church  of  Corinth.  From  some  fragments  of  the 
memoirs  of  Dionysius  of  Corinth,  written  ca.  170  and  pre- 
served by  Eusebius,  it  is  evident  that  it  was  then  supposed 
1  GescJiichte  der  AltchristlicJien  Literatur,  II,  1897,  p.  438  ff. 


188  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZAEETH 

in  Corinth  that  the  first  epistle  was  written  by  Clement. 
Dionysius  probably  assumed  that  it  must  have  been  written 
by  the  bishop  of  Rome  at  the  time  of  the  disturbance  in  the 
Corinthian  church,  and  that  Clement  then  held  that  office. 
This  may  have  been  the  view  of  his  contemporaries  in  Rome, 
as  excerpts  from  Hegesippus  in  Eusebius  show.  The  source 
of  both  statements  may  have  been  a  list  of  Roman  bishops 
drawn  up,  as  Harnack  has  shown,  not  long  before  the  time 
of  Hegesippus,  and  apparently  used  by  Irenaeus  in  180. 
This  list  mentioned  the  Corinthian  disorder  and  the  dis- 
patch of  the  letter  as  occurring  in  the  time  of  Bishop 
Clement.  But  it  has  been  conclusively  proved  that  the  mon- 
archical episcopate  did  not  exist  in  Rome  before  Anicetus 
(156-166).  "Bishop  Clement"  seems  to  be  a  creation  of  a 
later  time,  based  on  the  mention  of  an  otherwise  unknown 
Clement  in  Philippians  iv,  3,  or  on  the  vague  memory  of 
Consul  Flavius  Clemens,  put  to  death  by  Domitian  for 
* '  atheism, ' '  Jewish  leanings  and  neglect  of  duty,  or  a  con- 
fusion of  both.  That  the  Consul  cannot  have  written  this 
epistle  is  clear  from  the  fact  that  the  author  was  manifestly 
a  Jew.  There  is  no  allusion  to  Gnostic  heresies,  and  no  sign 
of  the  monarchical  episcopate  in  the  epistle.  But  both  of 
these  phenomena  appeared  later  in  Rome  than  in  the  East. 
The  author  was  apparently  familiar  with  I  Peter,  which 
was  written  at  the  end  of  Trajan's  reign.  A  date  about  120- 
125  is  most  probable. 

Fifteen  epistles  have  been  ascribed  to  Ignatius  of  Antioch. 
Two  to  John,  and  one  to  the  Virgin  Mary,  are  extant  only  in 
Latin,  and  were  published  in  1495.  They  are  universally 
rejected.  Of  the  other  twelve  there  is  a  longer  and  a 
shorter  recension.  The  former  is  represented  by  the  Latin 
text  published  in  1498,  the  Greek  text  published  in  1557, 
and  the  Armenian  text  published  in  1783  and  1849.  It  con- 
tains, in  addition  to  a  letter  sent  by  Mary  of  Cassobola 
(Castabala?)  before  the  departure  of  Ignatius  for  Rome, 
his  answer  to  her,  written  in  Antioch,  the  epistles  to  the 
churches  in  Ephesus,  Magnesia  on  the  Maeander,  Tralles, 
and  Rome,  written  in  Smyrna,  the  epistles  to  Philadelphia, 


THE  SECONDAEY  SOUECES  189 

Smyrna,  and  Polycarp,  written  in  Troas,  the  epistles  to  Tar- 
sus, Antioch  and  Deacon  Hero  of  Antioch,  written  in 
Philippi,  and  the  epistle  to  the  church  in  Philippi,  sent  from 
Rhegium  in  Italy.  The  latter  recension  is  represented  by 
an  Anglo-Latin  version  published  by  Usher  in  1644,  contain- 
ing the  same  works,  though  shorter  in  some  of  the  epistles, 
and  the  Greek  Codex  Mediceus,  ending  in  the  middle  of  the 
ninth  epistle,  published  by  Isaac  Voss  in  1646.  In  1845  a 
Syriac  text,  containing  the  epistles  to  Polycarp,  Ephesians 
and  Romans,  was  published  by  Cureton.  Especially  the  let- 
ter to  the  Ephesians  is  much  shorter  than  in  either  of  the 
Greek  recensions. 

All  Ignatian  epistles  were  rejected  as  spurious  by  Flacius, 
Calvin,  Chemnitz,  Dallaeus,  Scaliger  and  others.  An  im- 
portant distinction  was  made  in  1623  by  Vedelius  who  called 
attention  to  the  fact  that  only  seven  epistles  were  known  to 
Eusebius,  and  rejected  all  but  these.  Since  then  a  practical 
agreement  has  been  reached  among  scholars,  Catholic  and 
Protestant  alike,  that  the  epistles  to  Mary  of  Cassobola,  the 
Tarsians,  the  Antiochenes,  Hero,  and  the  Philippians, 
falsely  claim  to  have  been  written  by  Ignatius.  None  of 
them  can  be  earlier  than  the  beginning  of  the  third  century, 
and  the  Philippians  is  evidently  much  later;  but  the  igno- 
rance of  Eusebius  or  his  source  in  regard  to  them  does  not 
necessarily  show  that  they  belong  to  the  fourth  century. 
Only  three  of  the  seven  epistles  known  to  Eusebius  are 
quoted  by  earlier  writers.  Curiously  enough,  these  are  pre- 
cisely the  three  epistles  to  the  Ephesians,  the  Romans  and 
Polycarp,  which  are  found  in  the  Syriac  version,  published 
by  Cureton.  The  epistle  of  Ignatius  to  Polycarp  is  men- 
tioned in  a  spurious  addition  to  Polycarp 's  epistle  to  the 
Philippians,  that  to  the  Romans  was  known  to  Irenaeus,  and 
that  to  the  Ephesians  to  Origen.  But  even  this  earliest  col- 
lection of  three  epistles  seems  to  have  had  a  gradual  growth. 
The  epistle  to  the  Romans  is  different  in  style  and  character 
from  all  the  others,  and  appears  to  be  the  earliest.  The  let- 
ter to  Polycarp  is  clearly  later.  Ephesians  seems  to  have 


190  THE  PROPHET  OF  NAZARETH 

been  expanded  by  the  hand  that  wrote  Magnesians,  Tral- 
lians,  Philadelphians  and  Smyrnaeans. 

Romans  is  evidently  the  starting  point  of  this  Ignatian 
epistolary  literature.  There  is  as  yet  no  sign  of  the  great 
interest  of  the  later  epistles:  prevention  of  the  spread  of 
Gnostic  heresies  and  inculcation  of  obedience  to  the  bishop. 
The  absence  of  any  allusion  to  the  authority  of  the  bishop  is 
all  the  more  remarkable,  if  the  monarchical  episcopate,  in 
the  other  epistles  deemed  of  such  importance  that  no  church 
can  be  conceived  without  it,  was  still  unknown  in  Rome. 
The  whole  emphasis  is  on  the  eagerness  of  Ignatius  to  be- 
come a  martyr,  and  his  anxiety  lest  the  intercession  of  the 
Romans  prevent  the  fulfilment  of  his  desire.  This  is  intel- 
ligible in  the  first  effort  to  write  in  the  name  of  Ignatius 
and  presupposes  only  the  legend  which  carried  him  to  Rome 
to  suffer  his  martyrdom  there,  and  the  development  of  that 
morbid  aspiration  for  martyrdom  to  which  Marcus  Aurelius, 
Celsus  and  Caecilius  in  the  Octavius  of  Minucius  Felix  refer. 
How  early  the  legend  of  his  Roman  martyrdom  started,  we 
do  not  know.  It  is  possible  that  Lucian  in  his  work  De 
morte  Peregrini,  written  178  A.  D.,  draws  upon  the  story  of 
Ignatius  for  his  sketch  of  Proteus  Peregrinus,  the  philos- 
opher who  publicly  burnt  himself  to  death  in  Olympia  in 
165  A.  D.  All  critics  admit  that  by  that  time  the  seven 
epistles  are  likely  to  have  been  in  existence.  But  the  legend 
rests  on  no  solid  foundation ;  it  is  manifestly  an  imitation  of 
Paul's  journey,  and  can  be  shown  to  be  a  fiction  by  abso- 
lutely unimpeachable  historic  testimony.  Johannes  Ma- 
lalas,  the  Antiochene  historian,  on  the  basis  of  some  good  old 
source,  states  that  Ignatius  suffered  martyrdom,  not  in 
Rome,  but  in  Antioch,  in  December,  115  A.  D.,  when  Trajan 
was  in  the  city,  and  the  fact  is  independently  vouched  for 
by  a  Syrian  chronographer.  The  more  this  statement  con- 
trasts with  the  reigning  tradition  in  the  church,  and  the 
more  difficult  it  is  to  conceive  of  a  motive  for  its  invention, 
the  more  the  conviction  forces  itself  upon  us  that  this  is  the 
historic  truth.  Neither  Romans  alone,  nor  the  three  Syriac 
epistles,  nor  the  seven  known  to  Eusebius,  nor  the  twelve 


THE  SECONDARY  SOURCES  191 

found  in  the  Greek  manuscripts,  any  more  than  the  whole 
number  of  fifteen  ascribed  to  Ignatius,  can  be  regarded  as 
genuine.  Some  who  have  maintained  the  genuineness  of  the 
seven  have  been  willing  to  go  as  late  as  to  130  and  even  140 
A.  D.,  assuming  Ignatius  to  have  been  living  as  long  as  that. 
The  fourth  decade  of  the  second  century  is  not  improbable. 

While  it  may  not  be  capable  of  strict  proof,  there  is  no 
good  reason  why  the  main  part  of  the  epistle  of  Polycarp  to 
the  Philippians  should  not  have  been  written  by  the  Bishop 
of  Smyrna  who  suffered  martyrdom  in  166  A.  D.  When 
the  epistle  was  written  is  uncertain,  but  probably  not  before 
the  middle  of  the  century.  It  was  known  to  Irenaeus  in  the 
reign  of  Commodus  (180-192  A.  D.).  Ch.  xiii,  not  found  in 
the  Greek  text,  parts  of  ch.  ix,  and  other  sections,  are  inter- 
polations. 

Seven  so-called  Catholic  Epistles  in  the  New  Testament 
are  ascribed  to  immediate  disciples  or  brothers  of  Jesus.  It 
would  be  of  the  profoundest  interest  to  the  historian,  if  it 
could  be  shown  that  ecclesiastical  tradition  was  right  in  re- 
garding two  brothers  of  Jesus  as  the  authors  of  the  epistles 
of  James  and  Jude.  How  much  information  concerning 
his  early  life  they  must  have  possessed!  What  light  their 
manner  of  thought  and  speech  would  throw  upon  his! 
But  there  is  not  the  slightest  indication  in  the  epistle  of 
James  that  the  writer,  who  styles  himself  ' '  a  servant  of  God 
and  of  Jesus  Christ,"  either  was,  or  endeavored  to  speak 
in  the  name  of,  the  brother  of  Jesus.  Jacob  was  a  common 
name  among  the  Jews.  The  author  was  a  Hellenistic  Jew, 
to  whom  the  church  was  the  new  Israel,  the  question  of  the 
validity  of  the  letter  of  the  law  and  the  perpetuity  of  the 
cult  no  longer  existed,  the  one-sidedness,  artificiality  and 
tendency  to  anti-nomianism  in  the  Pauline  doctrine  of  jus- 
tification by  faith  were  painfully  apparent,  the  highest 
ethical  demands  of  the  law  and  the  "golden  rule"  of  Jesus 
formed  together  the  "royal  law  of  liberty,"  and  the  social 
and  economic  inequalities  constituted  the  gravest  danger  of 
the  church.  The  epistle  was  probably  written  ca.  150  A.  D. 

Jude  presents  itself  as  an  epistle  written  by  a  brother  of 


192  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZAEETH 

James.  By  James,  no  doubt  the  brother  of  Jesus,  the  head 
of  the  church  in  Jerusalem,  is  meant.  This  cautious  term 
seems  to  have  been  occasioned  by  the  idea  that  Jesus  cannot 
have  had  any  real  brothers.  The  author  is  far  removed 
from  the  apostolic  age.  He  looks  back  and  calls  to  mind 
"the  words  spoken  aforetime  by  the  apostles  of  our  Lord 
Jesus  Christ. ' '  The  heretics  he  combats  seem  to  belong  to 
the  'Gnostic  school  of  Carpocrates,  or  his  son  Epiphanes. 
His  quotations  from  Enoch  are  not  decisive  of  his  date,  as 
we  do  not  know  whether  chs.  xxxvii-lxxi  formed  a  part  of 
the  volume  with  which  he  was  acquainted.  The  epistle  can 
scarcely  have  been  written  before  150  A.  D. 

Five  epistles  are  assigned  by  tradition  to  immediate 
disciples  of  Jesus,  three  to  John,  and  two  to  Peter.  I  John 
makes  no  claim  for  itself.  It  was  evidently  ascribed  to  the 
apostle  John,  chiefly  because  of  its  unmistakable  similarity 
to  the  Fourth  Gospel.  The  decision  in  regard  to  that  Gos- 
pel necessarily  affects  the  epistle,  whether  it  is  placed  im- 
mediately before  or  after  the  greater  work.  The  most  prob- 
able view  is  that  it  was  written  later  than  the  Gospel,  not 
long  after  140  A.  D.  by  a  disciple  of  the  evangelist,  possibly 
in  his  name.  II  and  III  John  were  reckoned  among  the  an- 
tilegomena  and,  like  Jude  and  II  Peter,  not  found  at  all  in 
the  early  Edessene  Bible.  They  were  probably  written  by 
the  same  man,  ca.  150  A.  D.  Whether  he  meant  to  convey 
the  impression  that  he  was  the  "Presbyter  John,"  whom 
Papias  knew  as  a  contemporary  of  Aristion  and  a  different 
man  from  the  apostle  John,  is  doubtful.  He  does  not  give 
his  name. 

I  Peter  claims  to  be  an  epistle  of  Peter  to  the  dispersion, 
i.  e.,  the  scattered  Christians  in  Pontus,  Galatia,  Cappa- 
docia,  Asia  and  Bithynia.  Its  object  is  to  encourage  them 
to  suffer  patiently  persecution  for  the  Christian  name.  The 
epistle  shows  a  marked  dependence  upon  some  of  the 
Pauline  epistles,  including  Hebrews.  The  earliest  persecu- 
tion known  to  have  affected  this  region  is  that  under  Trajan 
to  which  the  letters  of  Pliny  bear  testimony.  The  epistle 
was  probably  written  not  far  from  117  A.  D.  II  Peter 


THE  SECONDAKY  SOUECES  193 

claims  to  be  the  work  of  Peter,  an  eye-witness  of  the  trans- 
figuration, and  the  writer  of  the  first  epistle.  It  is  recog- 
nized by  all  critical  students  that  the  claim  is  false.  It  was 
probably  written  about  170  A.  D.  Instead  of  being  the 
precious  words  of  brothers  and  disciples  of  Jesus,  these 
epistles  are  the  utterances  of  men  who  lived  from  eighty  to 
one  hundred  and  thirty  years  after  his  death,  full  of  interest 
and  vital  truth,  but  throwing  no  light  on  his  life  or  teaching. 

Fourteen  epistles  have  been  ascribed  to  Paul.  That  to 
the  Hebrews,  already  doubted  by  Carlstadt,  Grotius,  Semler, 
and  others  before  the  nineteenth  century,  and  to-day  uni- 
versally regarded  as  by  another  author  than  Paul,  was 
probably  written  in  Rome  toward  the  end  of  Trajan's  reign, 
somewhat  earlier  than  I  Peter..  The  so-called  pastoral 
epistles,  I  and  II  Timothy  and  Titus,  were  not  included  in 
Marcion's  collection  of  Pauline  epistles.  The  genuineness 
of  I  and  II  Timothy  was  doubted  by  J.  E.  C.  Schmidt,  that 
of  I  Timothy  by  Schleiermacher,  and  that  of  all  three  by 
Eichhorn  and  De  Wette,  but  Baur  caused  the  spuriousness 
of  these  epistles  to  be  recognized  by  all  independent  investi- 
gators. The  attempts  of  Harnack  and  others  to  save  a  few 
lines  have  not  been  convincing.  The  Gnostic  heresies  re- 
buked in  II  Timothy  and  Titus  seem  to  be  less  advanced  and 
the  bishops  are  not  yet  clearly  differentiated  from  the  pres- 
byters. It  therefore  seems  probable  that  these  epistles  were 
written  in  the  reign  of  Hadrian.  I  Timothy  apparently 
refers  to  Mansion's  famous  book  entitled  "  Antitheses "  in 
warning  against  "the  antitheses  of  a  gnosis  falsely  so 
called,"  and  it  is  familiar  with  the  monarchical  episcopate, 
though  the  place  of  writing  seems  to  be  Rome.  I  Timothy 
may  on  this  account  be  regarded  as  written  some  twenty 
years  later. 

Among  the  so  called  "letters  of  the  captivity,"  Ephesians, 
Colossians  and  Philemon  form  a  group  apparently  coming 
from  the  same  period.  The  genuineness  of  the  "twin- 
epistles,  ' '  Ephesians  and  Colossians,  was  questioned  already 
by  Evanson,  that  of  Ephesians  by  Usteri,  De  Wette, 
Schleiermacher  and  Schwegler,  and  that  of  Colossians  espe- 
13 


194  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZAEETH 

cially  by  Mayerhoff,  before  Baur  more  fully  exhibited  the 
situation  they  reflect.  In  Marcion's  collection,  Ephesians 
was  addressed  to  the  Laodiceans;  many  eminent  scholars 
have  held  that  it  originally  had  no  address  at  all.  It  is  a 
homily  on  the  unity  of  the  Church.  The  author  looks  back 
upon  "the  holy  apostles "  as  the  foundation  of  the  church. 
He  is  influenced  by  Gnostic  ideas.  I  Peter,  Acts  and  I 
Clement  were  apparently  known  to  him.  The  type  of 
thought  is  earlier  than  that  in  the  Johannine  writings.  The 
epistle  seems  to  have  been  used  by  the  authors  of  the  Teach- 
ing of  the  Twelve,  Hernias,  Second  Clement  and  Polycarp, 
and  written  about  130  A.  D.  Colossians  reveals  the  same 
Gnostic  affinities,  the  same  speculations  about  celestial  hier- 
archies, the  same  Christology,  the  same  conception  of  the 
Church.  The  false  Gnosticism  combated  seems,  however,  to 
be  of  a  somewhat  different  character,  legalistic,  ascetic, 
probably  Ebionitish.  This  accounts  for  the  similarity  in 
some  places  to  the  language  of  the  earliest  epistles,  which 
some  scholars  have  sought  to  explain  by  the  theory  of  a 
genuine  nucleus  expanded  by  the  author  of  Ephesians. 
Philemon  is  closely  akin  to  Colossians,  as  Baur  recognized. 
Eph.  i,  15-17  and  Col.  i,  4  are  used  in  vss  4-6,  as  Holtzmann 
has  shown ;  the  question  of  slavery  is  much  discussed  in  pre- 
cisely these  three  epistles ;  the  same  persons  receive  greetings 
in  Colossians  and  Philemon.  Steck  has  rightly  urged 
against  its  genuineness  the  improbability  of  a  Phrygian 
slave  running  away  either  to  Caesarea  or  to  Rome,  and  being 
sent  back  all  the  way  to  Phrygia,  and  of  the  promise  made 
by  the  prisoner  to  pay  Philemon  for  his  loss.  He  regards 
Pliny's  letters  to  Sabinian  on  behalf  of  a  freedman  as  hav- 
ing furnished  the  model.  But  it  is  not  improbable  that 
there  existed  a  tradition  to  the  effect  that  Paul  had  sent  back 
a  runaway  slave.  Colossians  and  Philemon  are  probably  a 
little  later  than  Ephesians.1 

1  The  ablest  defense  of  the  genuineness  of  the  Epistles  to  the 
Colossians  and  Philemon  is  that  by  J.  B.  Lightfoot,  St.  Paul's 
Epistles  to  the  Colossians  and  to  Philemon,  1875.  But  it  fails  to  do 
full  justice  to  the  arguments  that  may  be  urged  against  this  assump- 
tion. 


THE  SECONDARY  SOURCES  195 

The  epistle  to  the  Philippians  differs  radically  from  the 
group  just  considered.     Baur  and  Bruno  Bauer  saw  indica- 
tions of  Gnostic  ideas  in  ii,  6  ff. ;  but  the  passage  may  easily 
be  an  interpolation,  and  Holsten's  interpretation  renders 
the  Gnostic  character  doubtful.     There  is  reason  for  iden- 
tifying the  Clement  of  iv,  3  with  the  hypothetical  author  of 
one  or  both  of  the  Roman  homilies  sent  to  Corinth.     Hol- 
sten's  examination  of  this  epistle  is  a  perfect  model  of  the 
cautious  and  comprehensive,  fair  and  searching  criticism 
in  which  he  excelled.     He  was  led  to  reject  its  authenticity 
and  yet  at  the  same  time  to  assume  that  it  was  written  not 
long  after  the  death  of  Paul.1     The  advance  beyond  the 
ideas  of  the  great  epistles  on  which  he  based  his  conclusion 
is  indeed  noticeable,  but  it  is  scarcely  more  marked  than 
that  from  Galatians  to  Romans,  and  is  in  the  same  direction. 
Van  Manen   objects   to   Holsten's   method   of   comparing 
Philippians  with  four  epistles  quietly  assumed  to  be  gen- 
uine.    If  Holsten  never  examined  the  genuineness  of  these 
epistles,  because  even  Baur  had  left  them  unquestioned,  he 
was  indeed  at  fault.     Science  assumes  nothing,  is  in  honor 
bound  to  question  every  tradition.     But  if  an  examination 
utterly  indifferent  to  the  correctness  of  ecclesiastical  tradi- 
tion or  the  prevailing  views  at  any  time  should  find  reasons 
for  believing  that  some  of  these  epistles,  or  the  earliest  forms 
of  some  of  them,  are  genuine,  it  would  be  both  legitimate 
and  necessary  to  use  them  as  criteria.     The  absence  of  the 
Gnostic  element,  the  prominence  of  the  fundamental  prob- 
lems of  the  earlier  letters,  even  with  a  calmer  discussion  of 
them,  and  the  marked  similarity  of  style,  must  then  be  de- 
termining.    That  is  Van  Manen 's  own  method.     It  is  cer- 
tainly not  in  Philippians  itself  he  has  found  the  reasons 
for  assigning  this  epistle  to  so  late  a  date  as  125-150  A.  D. 
He  has  placed  it  there,  because,  on  grounds  less  apparent  in 
this  than  any  other  epistle,  he  has  come  to  the  conviction 
that  the  entire  Pauline  literature  was  written  at  that  time. 
Philippians  was  probably  written  by  Paul  ca.  63  A.  D.  in 
Rome. 

1  Jahrlucher  fur  protestantische  Theologie,  1875  and  1876. 


196  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZAEETH 

The  genuineness  of  I  Thessalonians  was  apparently  sus- 
pected already  by  the  author  of  II  Thessalonians.  In  mod- 
ern times  Baur,  Volkmar,  Holsten,  Steck,  Van  Manen,  and 
others  have  indicated  many  reasons  for  regarding  it  as 
spurious.  The  language  used  seems  to  presuppose  a  longer 
existence  of  the  church  in  Thessalonica  than  only  a  few 
months;  the  fierce  denunciation  of  the  Jews  is  all  the  more 
strange  if,  contrary  to  Acts  xvii,  pagans  converted  from 
their  idols  are  addressed;  "the  wrath  that  has  already  come 
upon  them  to  the  end"  can  scarcely  refer  to  anything  else 
than  the  destruction  of  Jerusalem ;  "the  words  of  the  Lord" 
concerning  his  coming  seem  to  have  been  drawn  from  some 
apocalypse  of  the  type  that  flourished  in  the  reign  of 
Domitian.  The  early  part  of  Trajan's  reign  is  the  most 
probable  date.  As  for  II  Thessalonians,  the  conclusions  of 
J.  E.  C.  Schmidt,  Mayerhoff,  De  Wette,  Baur  and  his  school 
have  only  been  strengthened  by  the  most  recent  studies  of 
the  epistle  by  Hilgenfeld,  Holtzmann,  Pfleiderer,  Wrede 
and  Hollmann.  The  advanced  form  of  the  Antichrist 
legend,  the  suspicion  cast  on  I  Thessalonians  in  spite  of  the 
unconscious  imitation  of  its  language,  and  the  reference  to 
the  greetings  written  in  Paul's  own  hand  as  a  sign  of  gen- 
uineness, are  decisive.  On  the  other  hand,  the  absence  of 
any  sign  of  Gnosticism  should  be  noted.  The  epistle  was 
probably  written  ca.  110  A.  D. 

The  most  burning  question  in  new  Testament  isagogics  at 
the  present  time  concerns  the  genuineness  of  the  four  epis- 
tles, Galatians,  I  and  II  Corinthians  and  Romans,  that  were 
regarded  by  Baur  and  the  Tubingen  school  as  the  work  of 
Paul.  The  doubts  in  regard  to  Romans  expressed  by  Evan- 
son1  had  attracted  little  attention.  Sixty  years  later  Bruno 
Bauer2  presented  his  reasons  for  believing  that  the  entire 
Pauline  literature  was  written  in  the  second  century.  In 
1877  he  particularly  emphasized  the  relation  of  the  Pauline 
thought  to  that  of  Seneca  and  the  Stoics.3  The  next  year 

1  The  Dissonance  of  the  four  generally  received  Evangelists,  1792. 

2  KritiTc  der  Paulinischen  Brief  e,  1850-1853. 
°Christus  und  die  Caesaren,  1877, 


THE  SECONDARY  SOURCES  19? 

Allard  Pierson1  was  led  to  reject  the  Pauline  epistles  as 
spurious.  Of  greater  importance  were  the  careful  and 
methodical  studies  that  A.  D.  Loman2  began  to  publish  in 
1882.  His  treatment  of  the  external  evidence  was  especially 
convincing.  Marcus  Joel3  accepted  his  conclusions  as  to 
the  spuriousness  of  all  the  Pauline  epistles,  and  used  ef- 
fectively the  scanty  Talmudic  material  to  show  that  there 
was  a  long  period  of  comparatively  friendly  relations  be- 
tween the  believers  in  Jesus  as  the  coming  Messiah  and  the 
other  members  of  the  Jewish  community  before  the  final 
break  came.  J.  C.  Matthes,  F.  Van  Loon,  H.  U.  Mey- 
boom,  J.  A.  Bruins  adopted  the  views  of  Loman.  In  1888 
Rudolf  Steck4  wrote  a  commentary  on  Galatians  from  the 
new  point  of  view.  The  ablest  and  most  indefatigable  de- 
fender of  this  position  since  1888  has  been  Van  Manen.5 
His  articles  in  the  Encyclopaedia  Biblica  have  brought  the 
question  to  the  fore  in  the  English  speaking  world,  where 
W.  B.  Smith6  has  also  championed  the  second  century  origin 
of  the  Pauline  epistles.  Mo'st  recently,  the  origin  of  these 
epistles  in  the  second  century  and  in  Rome  has  been  main- 
tained by  A.  Kalthoff7  in  his  attempt  to  understand  Chris- 
tianity as  an  expression  of  a  peculiar  social  rather  than  in- 
dividual consciousness,  the  aspiration  and  upward  move- 
ment of  the  Jewish  slave  proletariat  in  Rome. 

The  following  are  the  most  important  arguments  urged 
by  these  scholars  and  thinkers  in  favor  of  their  view. 
There  is  no  external  evidence  of  the  existence  of  any  Paul- 
ine epistle  before  the  second  century.  These  writings  are 
not  letters  in  any  strict  sense,  the  epistolary  form  being 
nothing  but  a  literary  device.  It  is  impossible  to  maintain 
their  unity,  and  most  natural  to  look  upon  them  as  com- 
pilations of  already  existing  literary  material.  Almost  all 

1  De  bergrede  en  andere  synoptische  fragmenten,  1878. 

2  Questiones  Paulinae  in  Theologische  Tijdschrlft,  1882,  1883,  1886. 
8  Blicke  in  die  Religionsgeschichte,  II,  1883. 

4  Der  Galaterbricf  nach  seiner  Echtneit  untersucht,  1888. 
0  De  Brief  aan  die  Romeinen,  1891 ;  De  brieven  aan  de  Korinthiers, 
1896. 

8  Hibbert  Journal,  1903,  and  elsewhere. 
7  Das  Christus  problem,  1902. 


193  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZAEETH 

other  epistles  of  this  kind  are  pseudonymous.  A  number 
of  epistles  that  claim  to  be  by  Paul  have  been  generally 
recognized  as  spurious.  There  is  no  such  difference  between 
the  four  and  the  rest  as  to  justify  the  opinion  that  more  than 
half  a  century  lies  between  them.  The  author  of  Acts  does 
not  seem  to  be  acquainted  with  them.  The  character  and 
teaching  of  Paul,  according  to  these  epistles,  are  very  dif- 
ferent from  the  representation  given  in  Acts,  which  does  not 
suggest  a  radical  who  has  broken  completely  with  Judaism. 
A  teacher  more  in  harmony  with  the  immediate  disciples  of 
Jesus  is  to  be  expected  rather  than  a  radical  and  a  reformer 
so  soon  after  the  establishment  of  Christianity.  The  author 
of  the  epistles  was  manifestly  influenced  by  Seneca,  if  not 
by  Epictetus.  The  class  consciousness  of  the  proletariat 
speaks  through  him.  It  is  inconceivable  that  a  stranger 
should  address  the  church  of  Rome  as  he  does,  and  one  does 
not  get  any  definite  conception  of  the  conditions  of  this 
church  or  its  membership.  The  appearance  of  the  radical 
of  the  epistles  twenty-five  years  after  the  death  of  Jesus 
could  be  explained  only  by  a  psychological  miracle,  as  im- 
possible as  the  physical  miracle  by  which  tradition  ex- 
plains it. 

It  should  be  granted  at  once  that  it  is  not  possible  to  prove 
by  external  evidence  the  existence  of  any  Pauline  epistle  in 
the  first  century.  Those  theologians  are  easily  satisfied  who 
refer  to  the  mention  of  a  Pauline  epistle  by  Marcion  as  ' '  the 
best  possible  external  evidence. "  A  great  deal  may  happen 
in  eighty  years.  The  genuineness  of  the  principal  epistles 
must  therefore  be  decided  solely  on  internal  grounds.  It 
should  also  be  freely  admitted  that,  in  the  absence  of  com- 
petent external  testimony,  only  a  high  degree  of  probability, 
but  never  absolute  certainty,  can  be  reached.  It  ought  to  be 
needless  to  remark  that,  in  a  matter  thus  necessarily  left 
to  the  subjective  judgment  of  the  investigator,  dogmatism 
and  impatience  with  dissenting  views  are  wholly  out  of 
place.  Are  these  epistles  letters  at  all  ?  The  personal  com- 
munications found  among  Egyptian  papyri  are  very  differ- 
ent. On  the  other  hand,  numerous  examples  of  epistles 


THE  SECONDAEY  SOUECES  199 

clearly  intended  for  a  larger  circle  of  readers  or  hearers 
have  come  to  us.  Many  of  these  unquestionably  were 
pseudepigrapha  written  in  the  name  of  distinguished  men 
with  the  whole  epistolary  apparatus  of  personal  references 
and  greetings.  What  we  would  call  an  essay,  a  treatise,  a 
tract  very  often  took  this  form.  But  this  furnishes  no 
ground  for  doubting  that  such  a  discussion  of  important 
questions  was  occasionally  sent  by  a  religious  propagandist 
in  the  form  of  an  epistle  to  a  cult  society  in  whose  welfare 
he  was  deeply  interested.  The  epistles  of  Seneca  often  read 
like  treatises.  Why  should  not  Paul's? 

It  is  of  course  true  that  the  absolute  integrity  of  the  four 
epistles  cannot  be  maintained.  The  older  they  are,  the  less 
likely  are  they  to  have  come  down  to  us  in  their  original 
form.  The  longer  the  period  was  that  elapsed  before  they 
began  to  enjoy  canonical  authority,  the  more  the  text  must 
have  suffered  through  careless  copying.  The  less  accus- 
tomed to  a  cautious  and  reverent  handling  of  holy  scriptures 
the  circles  were  through  which  they  passed,  the  more  prob- 
ability is  there  of  changes,  corrections  and  additions.  It 
would  be  unreasonable  to  expect  of  Hellenistic  Jews,  fresh 
converts  from  paganism  and  Gnostic  Christians  such  ac- 
curacy in  the  transmission  of  epistles,  not  claiming  in  any 
way  to  be  inspired  oracles,  as  the  Palestinian  Jews  were 
just  learning  to  secure  by  various  artificial  means  in  the 
case  of  recognized  Scriptures.  Van  Manen  has  conclusively 
shown  that  Marcion  possessed  an  earlier  form  of  Galatians 
than  the  somewhat  expanded  Catholic  epistle.  But  his  copy 
had  no  doubt  already  been  interpolated.  Signs  of  correct- 
ing pens  are  seen  in  the  story  of  Hagar  and  Sinai.  The 
whole  allegorical  interpretation  is  likely  to  be  an  interpola- 
tion. It  can  scarcely  be  earlier  than  the  fall  of  Jerusalem 
and  the  carrying  away  of  captives  in  70  A.  D.  Baur1 
recognized  that  Romans  xv  and  xvi  are  a  later  addition. 
Straatman2  is  probably  right  in  regarding  xii-xiv  as  such. 

1Semler  and  Eichhorn  had  already  espoused  the  view  that  these 
chapters,  though  by  Paul,  did  not  originally  belong  to  this  epistle. 
2  Theologisch  Tijdschrift,  1868,  p.  38  ff. 


200  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZAEETH 

The  account  of  the  appearances  of  Jesus  after  his  resurrec- 
tion in  I  Corinthians  xv,  5-11  seems  to  be  a  later  insertion. 
Only  a  very  searching  literary  criticism  will  be  able  to  dis- 
cover what  the  original  form  of  II  Corinthians  was. 
Gradual  corruption  and  enlargement  belong  to  the  literary 
vicissitudes  of  all  ancient  manuscripts.  But  Van  Manen's 
theory  that  these  epistles  are  compilations  does  not  seem 
probable.  In  the  writing  of  history  this  was  the  common 
method.  But  why  should  the  writer  of  an  epistle  be  sup- 
posed to  draw  upon  a  new  literary  source  every  time  he 
changes  his  subject?  And  where  would  his  literary  ma- 
terial come  from?  In  what  form  would  these  little  frag- 
ments have  existed  before  ? 

There  is  much  force  in  the  consideration  that  none  of  the 
epistles  ascribed  to  Peter  and  John,  James  and  Jude,  Clem- 
ent and  Barnabas,  Ignatius  and  Hernias  can  be  regarded  as 
genuine,  and  that  some  Pauline  letters  must  be  rejected. 
But  there  are  genuine  epistles  as  well  as  fictitious  ones  that 
have  come  down  from  pagan  antiquity.  There  would  be  a 
special  reason  for  writing  epistles  in  the  name  of  the  im- 
mediate disciples  of  Jesus  and  his  brothers,  if  there  existed 
epistles  of  Paul,  and  the  writing  of  more  epistles  in  his 
name  would  be  natural,  if  a  few  had  at  least  enjoyed  a  long 
prestige. 

Whether  the  difference  between  Galatians  and  Ephesians 
is  such  as  to  demand  sixty  years  between  them,  is  a  question 
not  easily  answered.  But  it  must  be  apparent  to  every 
student  that  the  world  of  thought  into  which  the  former 
ushers  us  is  altogether  different  from  that  of  the  latter. 
Has  the  Law  eternal  validity?  Must  a  Gentile  believer  in 
Jesus  as  the  Messiah  be  circumcised?  Must  he  keep  the 
distinction  between  clean  and  unclean  food?  Must  he  ob- 
serve the  sabbath?  Must  he  abstain  from  meat  offered  to 
idols?  These  are  the  questions  that  occupy  the  minds  of 
the  Galatians.  They  were  not  of  a  speculative,  but  of  an 
entirely  practical  nature.  They  must  have  arisen  as  soon 
as  followers  of  Jesus  began  to  proclaim  his  gospel  in  the 
Hellenistic  world.  It  was  not  among  the  Aramaic-speaking 


THE  SECONDARY  SOURCES  201 


Christians  of  Palestine  that  these  questions  would  be  likely 
to  cause  a  disturbance,  but  among  the  Greek-speaking  Jews, 
who  would  naturally  be  divided  among  themselves.  How 
long  the  conflict  must  have  raged  over  these  fundamental 
issues  before  they  were  driven  into  the  background,  we  have 
no  means  of  determining.  But  the  time  indicated  does  not 
seem  excessive.  When  Ephesians  was  written,  the  Church 
has  been  completely  severed  from  the  mother-body,  and  the 
Gnostic  speculations  occupy  the  minds  of  the  Christians. 
The  preparation  for  this  may  be  seen  in  Acts,  where  the 
older  apostles  have  been  unconsciously  assimilated  to  Paul, 
and  Paul  brought  into  more  harmonious  relations  to  them. 
It  is  impossible  to  say  whether  the  author  knew  any  letter  of 
Paul.  A  letter  somewhere  in  Galatia,  two  or  three  in 
Greece,  and  one  in  Italy,  even  a  number  of  copies  scattered 
here  and  there  in  these  churches,  may  very  well  have  escaped 
his  attention.  And  if  he  had  read  any  of  them,  it  is  likely 
to  have  been  uncritically  and  in  the  light  of  the  traditions, 
conditions,  and  impressions  of  his  own  age. 

It  is  right  to  maintain  that  these  epistles  must  be  placed, 
regardless  of  tradition,  where  they  belong  in  the  develop- 
ment of  religious  thought.  Declamations  against  the  theory 
of  natural  evolution  will  have  no  effect.  If  the  larger  Paul- 
ine epistles  can  be  explained  naturally  as  a  product  of  sec- 
ond century  conditions,  and  as  the  work  of  Paul  only  by  a 
physical  or  psychical  miracle,  there  should  be  no  more  hesi- 
tancy in  regard  to  them  than  in  the  case  of  the  Fourth  Gos- 
pel or  the  Catholic  Epistles.  But  in  tracing  the  natural 
development  it  is  necessary  to  observe  the  different  tend- 
encies of  life  and  thought  within  Judaism,  and  their  un- 
avoidable continuance  among  the  Jews  who  became  Chris- 
tians. The  very  fact  that  they  used  the  Greek  language, 
were  in  constant  contact  with  Greeks,  and  lived  at  a  distance 
from  temple  and  cult,  exposed  Hellenistic  Jews  to  influences 
of  thought  not  felt  at  all,  or  at  least  not  so  directly,  by  Ara- 
maic-speaking Jews  living  in  Palestine.  So  also  the  very 
fact  that  they  spoke  Aramaic,  heard  the  Hebrew  Scriptures 
read,  lived  in  the  midst  of  their  native  institutions,  and  were 


202  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZAEETH 

bound  up  with  the  national  life,  tended  to  make  the  Pales- 
tinian Christians  conservative.  An  outbreak  of  radicalism 
is  as  natural  in  a  Hellenistic  Jew  as  a  keen  resentment 
against  it  on  the  part  of  Aramaic-speaking  Jews  in  Judaea, 
even  if  they  had  learned  to  look  for  the  return  of  Jesus  as 
the  Messiah.  It  is  not  legitimate  to  ask  whether  the  thought 
of  Galatians  can  have  developed  in  twenty-five  years  from 
the  faith  of  the  Galilean  disciples  of  Jesus  immediately 
after  his  death.  The  answer  to  this  question  must  of  course 
be  in  the  negative.  Behind  the  larger  Pauline  epistles  lies 
the  world  of  thought  in  which  an  educated  Hellenistic  Jew 
lived,  the  world  of  Philo  and  of  Seneca.  The  Paul  of  these 
epistles  is  no  more  a  miracle  than  is  Philo,  whose  philosophy 
cannot  be  explained  by  the  book  of  Jubilees  or  the  Pirqe 
Aboth.  A  correct  instinct  led  an  early  Christian  to  forge  a 
correspondence  between  Paul  and  Seneca.  Bruno  Bauer 
was  also  right  when  he  divined  a  relation  between  the  Stoic 
thought  of  Seneca  and  Paulinism.  Pfleiderer,1  with  true 
insight,  calls  attention  to  this  philosophico-religious  atmos- 
phere which  must  have  existed  in  Tarsus,  the  native  town  of 
Paul,  in  the  first  half  of  the  first  century.  The  great  tend- 
encies of  thought  and  life  are  there  before  they  find  expres- 
sion in  a  Philo,  a  Seneca,  or  a  Paul.  It  is  also  vain  to  ask 
whether  a  convert  can  become  at  once  a  reformer  of  the  faith 
he  has  embraced.  That  depends  entirely  upon  his  character 
and  the  stage  of  development  of  the  faith.  If  his  conver- 
sion meant  a  long  stride  from  his  former  position,  the 
impetus  that  brought  him  there  may  easily  carry  him  fur- 
ther. If  the  cause  with  which  he  identified  himself  was 
itself  in  its  infancy,  and  seemed  to  him  to  imply  a  larger 
principle  than  its  defenders  recognized,  there  is  nothing 
improbable  in  such  a  radicalism  at  the  outset.  In  the  case 
of  Paul,  however,  it  was  not  until  after  years  of  reflection 
that  he  seems  to  have  appeared  with  his  new  interpretation 
of  the  Gospel,  based  on  the  universalistic  tendency  so  natural 
to  a  Hellenistic  Jew.  The  more  earnestly  it  is  attempted  to 
understand  the  actual  evolution  of  Pauliuism,  the  more  im- 
Jln  Vrchristentum2,  1902. 


THE  SECONDABY  SOURCES  203 

perative  it  becomes  to  postulate  a  marked  personality,  in 
whom  the  tendencies  of  Hellenistic  Judaism  and  Palestinian 
Pharisaism  met,  and  took  a  new  direction  under  the  influ- 
ence of  a  strong  and  peculiar  Messianic  conviction.  His 
appearance  must  have  been  followed,  it  would  seem,  by  a 
long  conflict  over  just  the  issues  most  clearly  seen  in  Gala- 
tians.  Finally,  these  issues  could  only  be  retired  by  the 
gradual  separation  of  the  Christian  church  from  its  original 
ethnic  connection.  Such  a  personality  is  suggested  by  the 
earlier  sources  of  Acts;  such  a  conflict  this  historic  work 
cannot  conceal ;  such  a  shifting  of  the  interest  and  the  view- 
point the  author  clearly  manifests.  In  view  of  such  facts  as 
are  known  to  us,  it  remains  most  probable  that  the  epistles 
to  the  Galatians,  the  Corinthians  and  the  Komans  were  writ- 
ten by  Paul  between  56  and  60  A.  D. 

What  evidential  value,  so  far  as  the  life  and  teaching  of 
Jesus  are  concerned,  have  the  five  epistles  that  may  thus  be 
ascribed  to  Paul?  In  view  of  the  reasonable  doubts  as  to 
the  integrity  of  the  present  text,  they  must  be  used  with 
great  caution,  and  details  cannot  be  pressed.  It  may  be 
inferred,  however,  that  in  the  reign  of  Nero  there  were 
Christian  cult-communities  in  Syria,  Asia  Minor,  Greece  and 
Rome,  in  which  the  founder  of  the  faith,  Jesus,  was  believed 
to  have  been  a  martyr,  crucified  in  Judaea,  to  have  been 
raised  again  from  the  dead  on  the  third  day  according  to  the 
Hebrew  Scriptures,  and  to  be  ready  to  return  soon  as  the 
Messiah.  Concerning  the  nature  of  his  Messiahship,  and 
the  effect  of  his  death  and  resurrection  upon  the  Jewish  law, 
there  were  in  these  societies  wide  differences  of  opinion. 
Paul  himself  maintained  that  Jesus  had  existed  before  his 
earthly  life  as  the  celestial  and  archetypal  man,  that  his 
death  revealed  the  insufficiency  and  temporary  character  of 
the  law,  and  freed  the  believer  from  all  obligation  to  its 
carnal  commandments,  and  that  his  resurrection  proved  him 
now  to  be  the  Son  of  God,  the  Lord  of  a  new  dispensation 
destined  to  end  only  with  the  subjection  of  all  things  to  God, 
and  the  Spirit  of  Life,  whose  inwardly  operating  law  brings 
about  the  moral  perfection  which  the  Bible  as  an  external 


204  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZAEETH 

authority  could  not  accomplish.  While  these  views  were 
shared  by  many  Hellenistic  Jews  who  had  embraced  the  new 
faith,  and  their  general  tendency  was  agreeable  to  converted 
pagans,  however  strange  some  of  the  Pauline  conceptions 
and  methods  of  reasoning  may  have  seemed  to  them,  it  is 
evident  from  the  epistles  that  the  mother-church  in  Jeru- 
salem looked  upon  Jesus  as  a  prophet,  mighty  in  word  and 
deed,  who  had  been  put  to  death  by  the  rulers,  but  had  been 
raised  by  God  and  preserved  in  heaven,  until  the  day  when 
he  should  appear  as  the  Messiah  to  establish  the  kingdom  of 
Israel,  and  upon  his  death  and  resurrection  as  having  no 
effect  on  the  validity  of  the  law  and  the  sacred  customs  en- 
joined by  it,  such  as  circumcision,  tabus,  and  festivals. 
Aside  from  the  crucifixion,  not  a  single  fact  in  the  life  of 
Jesus  can  be  gleaned  from  these  epistles,  nor  do  they  record 
a  single  saying  of  Jesus.  With  the  uncertainty  that  rests 
on  the  historical  character  of  the  Caesarean  imprisonment, 
the  statements  in  Acts  from  which  the  duration  of  his  mis- 
sionary journeys  has  been  computed,  and  the  interpretation 
of  the  fourteen-year  period  mentioned  in  Galatians,  it  is 
quite  impossible  to  determine  how  many  years  before  his 
appearance  before  Festus  ( 60-62 )  Paul  had  the  vision  which 
convinced  him  that  Jesus  had  been  raised  from  the  dead, 
and,  in  spite  of  his  crucifixion,  was  the  Messiah.  It  cannot 
have  been  many  years,  however,  after  the  death  of  Jesus. 
There  is  no  intimation  that  the  disciples  of  Jesus  had  not 
already  reached  the  conviction  that  Jesus  had  been  raised 
from  the  dead  on  the  third  day  according  to  the  Scriptures, 
but  rather  probable  that  statements  to  this  effect  constituted 
the  psychological  preparation  of  Paul  for  his  ecstatic  ex- 
perience. If,  therefore,  little  light  is  thrown  by  the  Pauline 
epistles  upon  the  life  and  teaching  of  Jesus,  they  are  never- 
theless of  great  value  as  testimonies  of  one  who,  though  he 
did  not  know  Jesus  personally,  knew  his  immediate  disciples, 
and  cannot  have  been  mistaken  in  regard  to  his  historic  ex- 
istence in  his  own  life-time  and  a  few  years  before  his  con- 
version, and  also  in  reference  to  the  early  appearance  of  the 
two  ideas  that  Jesus  had  been  raised  from  the  dead  and  that 
he  would  return  to  earth  on  the  clouds  of  heaven. 


CHAPTER  IX 

THE  GOSPELS 

Many  gospels  that  were  read  and  cherished  by  Chris- 
tians in  the  second  century  failed  to  maintain  their  hold 
upon  the  developing  Catholic  Church  and  to  find  a  place 
in  its  canon  of  Scriptures.  The  most  important  of  these 
seem  to  have  been  the  Gospel  according  to  the  Hebrews, 
the  Gospel  according  to  the  Ebionites,  the  Gospel  accord- 
ing to  the  Egyptians,  and  the  Gospel  according  to  Peter. 
The  Gospel  according  to  the  Hebrews  appears  to  have 
existed  both  in  its  original  Hebrew  or  Aramaic  form  and 
in  a  Greek  translation.  Jerome  claims  to  have  seen  and 
translated  it.  But  his  translation  is  lost,  and  the  quota- 
tions do  not  permit  us  to  form  a  true  estimate  of  its  char- 
acter. That  it  was  not  identical  with  our  Gospel  accord- 
ing to  Matthew  is  clear  both  from  the  quotations  and  from 
the  fact  that  he  felt  it  necessary  to  undertake  a  transla- 
tion. Whether  it  was  written  in  Hebrew  or  in  Aramaic 
is  uncertain.  In  the  former  case  it  would  probably  be 
itself  a  translation.  If  Jerome  had  before  him  an  Ara- 
maic original,  it  is  more  likely  to  have  been  a  descendant 
of  an  early  Palestinian  gospel.  This  is,  on  the  whole, 
most  probable.  But  it  is,  of  course,  unsafe  to  infer  from 
quotations  of  peculiar  statements  what  this  gospel  may 
have  been  in  its  original  form.  During  three  centuries  of 
use  it  had  naturally  gathered  many  interpolations  and 
accretions.  Still  less  dependence  can  be  placed  on  a 
Greek  version  even  in  the  time  of  Clement  of  Alexandria. 
There  is  nothing  to  prevent  the  assumption  that  the  Gos- 
pel according  to  the  Hebrews  in  its  earliest  form  was  a 
copy  of  the  first  written  Aramaic  gospel.  But  at  present 

305 


206  THE  PKOPHET  OF  NAZAEETH 

this  is  not  capable  of  proof.  The  altogether  trustworthy 
narrative  in  John  vii,  53-viii,  11,  seems  to  have  been  taken 
from  this  gospel ;  but  whether  the  Fourth  Evangelist  him- 
self introduced  it,  or  anywhere  else  used  this  source,  is 
doubtful.  It  is  equally  uncertain  whether  the  gospel  in 
any  form  was  known  to  Justin  Martyr.  The  Gospel  ac- 
cording to  the  Ebionites  seems  to  be  a  later  production. 
The  relations  of  this  work  in  its  earlier  forms  to  the  Gos- 
pel according  to  the  Hebrews  cannot  be  determined.  It 
is  perhaps  hazardous  to  draw  any  conclusions  as  to  the 
general  character  of  the  Gospel  according  to  the  Egyp- 
tians from  the  one  extant  quotation.  But  it  seems  safe  to 
infer  that  it  was  originally  written  in  Greek  and  that  it 
reflected  Hellenistic  tendencies.  Harnack  is  probably 
right  in  ascribing  to  the  same  milieu,  if  not  to  this  gospel 
itself,  the  collections  of  "Sayings  of  Jesus "  recently  found 
in  Egypt.  There  is  not  the  slightest  reason  to  suppose 
that  any  of  these  is  genuine. 

Of  more  immediate  importance  is  the  Gospel  according 
to  Peter.  A  fragment  of  this  work  was  discovered  at 
Akhmim,  Egypt,  in  1892.  But  it  was  probably  written 
in  Syria.  Serapion  of  Antioch  (ca.  200  A.  D.)  refers  to 
it;  and  Harnack1  has  shown  that  Justin  Martyr  used  it. 
The  author  was  apparently  familiar  with  the  Synoptics, 
but  used  them  with  great  freedom  and  drew  upon  the 
stream  of  oral  tradition.  He  was  not  acquainted  with 
the  Fourth  Gospel.  There  is  no  indication  of  Gnosticism, 
and  its  docetic  tendency  is  not  sufficiently  marked  to  make 
it  a  heretical  gospel.  Besides,  a  distinction  between 
Catholic  and  sectarian  gospels  did  not  exist  in  the  period 
before  Justin  Martyr.  Some  relatively  ancient  features 
have  been  preserved  in  this  gospel.  Thus  Jesus  is  cruci- 
fied by  the  Jews,  and  his  disciples  return  to  Galilee  before 
they  have  seen  their  risen  Master.  His  first  appearance 
to  them  in  Galilee  must  therefore  have  been  told  in  the 

1  Bruchstuclce  des  Evangeliums  und  der  Apokalypse  des  Petrus*, 
1893,  p.  37  ff. 


THE  GOSPELS  207 


lost  conclusion  to  the  gospel.1  On  the  other  hand,  there 
are  also  some  very  late  features.  The  gospel  seems  to 
have  been  written  between  130  and  150  A.  D.  The  Gospel 
according  to  Nicodemus,  the  Protevangelium  Jacobi,  and 
other  gospels  of  the  infancy,  are  late  works  possessing  no 
historical  value. 

From  the  time  of  Irenaeus  the  four  Gospels  according 
to  Matthew,  Mark,  Luke  and  John  have  enjoyed  greater 
authority  than  all  others.  A  distinction  must  be  made, 
however,  between  the  Fourth  Gospel  and  the  Synoptics. 
In  regard  to  the  former  there  was  a  difference  of  opinion 
already  in  the  Early  Church.  A  party  called  the  Alogi 
rejected  it  as  spurious  at  the  very  time  when  the  first 
external  evidence  of  its  existence  is  found.  These  Alogi 
were  not  heretical  innovators,  but  conservatives  who 
looked  upon  the  application  of  the  Logos-conception  to 
Jesus  as  a  new  and  dangerous  doctrine.  Whether  they 
had  any  sympathizers  in  the  Middle  Ages  is  not  known. 
The  German  and  Swiss  reformers  did  not  question  either 
the  authorship  or  the  historical  accuracy  of  the  Fourth 
Gospel.  But  we  have  the  testimony  of  Giuliano  of  Milan, 
given  before  the  Inquisition  and  preserved  in  its  official 
records,2  to  the  effect  that  the  Baptists  in  Italy  did  not 
regard  it  as  of  apostolic  origin  and  authority.  If  the 
liberty  of  conscience  for  which  they  fought  had  been 
accorded  to  them,  we  might  have  learned  the  reasons  for 
their  faith,  and  the  world  would  not  have  had  to  wait  a 
quarter  of  a  millennium  for  a  truer  estimate  of  this  gos- 
pel. A  century  of  labor  has  at  last  established  it. 
Through  the  insight  and  research  of  such  men  as  Evan- 
son,  Horst,  Bretschneider,  Bruno  Bauer,  Strauss,  Schwe- 
gler,  Baur,  Hilgenfeld,  Holtzmann,  Scholten,  Albert  Re- 

1  That  the  author  knows  no  appearance  of  Jesus  on  Easter  Sunday- 
is  important,  showing,  as  Harnack  remarks  (1.  c.,  p.  62),  that  "on 
this  important  point  we  have  in  the  Gospel  acording  to  Peter  a  tradi- 
tion that  is  older  than  Matthew,  Mark,  Luke  and  John. ' ' 

2  See  especially  Eevista  Christiana,  1885,  and  Comba,  I  nostri  pro- 
testanti,  1897,  II,  488  ff. 


208  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZAKETH 

ville,  Thoma,  Pfleiderer,  Weizsacker,  Cassels,  Sihmiedel, 
Van  Manen,  Jean  Reville,  Spitta,  Harnack,  Bacon,  Fries, 
Kreyenbiihl  and  Grill,  not  to  mention  others,  the  charac- 
ter of  the  gospel  has  become  increasingly  manifest. 
There  are  many  problems  left,  but  they  are  of  wholly  sub- 
ordinate value.  Whether  the  external  or  the  internal 
evidence  is  considered,  the  results  are  the  same.  It  is  not 
the  work  of  the  apostle  John ;  it  is  a  product  of  the  second 
century ;  it  cannot  be  used  independently  as  a  source  from 
which  to  derive  knowledge  concerning  the  life  and  teach- 
ing of  Jesus ;  it  is  not  a  historical  but  a  didactic  treatise ; 
it  belongs  to  the  period  of  the  conflict  between  Gnosticism 
and  Catholicism;  it  reflects  the  philosophical  speculation 
of  Philo  and  the  Alexandrian  school  and  the  Christian 
Gnosticism  they  helped  to  foster,  though  with  such  modi- 
fications as  made  it  a  useful  instrument  for  the  develop- 
ment of  the  Catholic  type  of  thought. 

The  first  reference  to  this  gospel  as  a  work  of  John  is 
found  in  an  epistle  written  by  Theophilus  of  Antioch  ca. 
180  A.  D. ;  and  the  first  distinct  statement  that  its  author 
was  the  apostle  John  is  met  in  a  work  of  Irenaeus,  then 
bishop  of  Lyons,  written  about  the  same  time.  The  Mura- 
torian  Canon  at  the  end  of  the  second  century  ascribes  it 
to  the  apostle.  Celsus  may  have  consulted  the  gospel  in 
178  A.  D.  Tatian  knew  it.  This  is  certain,  aside  from  the 
question  of  the  Diatessaron.  The  Arabic  translation  of  a 
Diatessaron  published  by  Ciasca  has  on  insufficient 
grounds  been  supposed  to  be  Tatian 's.  The  Sinaitic 
Syriac,  which  contains  the  Fourth  Gospel,  may  have  been 
made  toward  the  end  of  the  second  century.  Fragments 
have  been  preserved  of  a  commentary  on  this  gospel  by 
Ileracleon,  a  disciple  of  Yalentinus.  Two  other  disciples 
of  Valentinus,  Ptolemy  and  Theodotus,  were  familiar  with 
it.  There  is  no  evidence  that  Valentinus  himself  knew  it ; 
and  the  testimony  of  Hippolytus  in  his  Philosophoumena 
(ca.  225  A.  D.)  to  its  use  by  Basilides  is  not  trustworthy. 
Marcion,  who  came  to  Rome  about  144  A.  D.,  was  not 
acquainted  with  it.  Justin  Martyr,  who  wrote  his  Apolo- 


THE  GOSPELS  209 


gies  and  Dialogue  with  Trypho  between  152  and  160  A.  D.; 
does  not  mention  it.     Some  of  his  statements,  and  espe- 
cially his  use  of  the  Logos-speculation,  have  led  to  the 
belief  that  he  may  have  read  it,  though  he  did  not  recog- 
nize its  authority.     It  is  more  natural  to  suppose  that  he 
was  influenced  by  the  general  trend  of  thought  that  found 
expression  in  the  gospel.     Neither  Irenaeus  nor  Eusebius 
has  preserved  any  statement  from  the  lost  work  of  Papias 
indicating  that  he  knew  this  gospel.     A  Bodleyan  manu- 
script quoting  "  John  the  Evangelist"  seems  to  be  ascribed 
to  Papias.     But  this  Papias  is  probably  the  lexicographer 
of  the  twelfth  century.     A  manuscript  in  the  Vatican  con- 
tains  an  argumentum  in  which  Papias  is  said  to  have 
acted  as  John's  amanuensis  and  yet  to  have  been  a  con- 
temporary of  Marcion.     Though  possibly  older  than  Jer- 
ome, this  argumentum  has  no  historical  value.     Polycarp 
does  not  mention  this  gospel.     No  quotations  from  it  are 
found  in  the  epistles  ascribed  to  Ignatius  of  Antioch,  and 
probably  written  ca.  140  A.  D.,  though  similar  ideas  are 
here   and   there    expressed.     The    Gnostic   Acts    of   John 
ascribed  to  Leucius  Charinus  speak  of  John  as  "the  be- 
loved disciple."     This  work  evidently  comes  from  the 
same  milieu  as  the  gospel;  but  it  is  impossible  to  prove 
dependence  on  either  side.     The  external  evidence  shows 
with  increasing  clearness,  what  was  observed  already  a 
century  ago,  that  this  gospel  was  cherished  among  the 
Gnostics  before  it  came  into  use  among  Catholic  Chris- 
tians.1 

Since  the  end  of  the  second  century  a  tradition  ex- 
isted in  the  Church  that  the  apostle  John  lived  to  a  high 
old  age  in  Ephesus  and  died  there  peaceably  in  the  time  of 
Trajan.  It  is  significant  that  Papias  evidently  did  not 
know  the  apostle  John  either  as  the  writer  of  a  gospel  or 
as  the  head  of  the  church  in  Ephesus.  If  he  had,  Irenaeus 
and  Eusebius  would  have  been  only  too  glad  to  record 
it.  Clement  of  Rome,  Barnabas,  Hermas,  the  Deutero- 

1  Before  Bretschneider  'a  ProlaUlia,  1820,  Horst  in  Henke's  Maga- 
zin,  1803,  presented  this  fact  with  great  clearness, 
14 


210  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZAEETH 

Pauline  epistles  to  the  Colossians  and  Ephesians,  Marcion, 
and  the  Ignatian  epistles  are  silent  concerning  any  so- 
journ of  the  apostle  John  in  Asia  Minor.  There  was  in 
fact  a  somewhat  widespread  tradition  that  the  apostle 
John  did  not  die  naturally  at  Ephesus  in  the  reign  of  Tra- 
jan, but  was  put  to  death  by  the  Jews  in  Jerusalem  long 
before  that  time.  George  the  Sinner  in  the  ninth  century 
quotes  a  passage  from  the  second  book  of  Papias's  work 
affirming  that  the  apostle  John  was  put  to  death  by  the 
Jews.  Heracleon  does  not  mention  John  among  the  apos- 
tles who  had  died  a  natural  death.  The  ancient  Syriac 
calendar  commemorates  on  December  27  as  martyrs 
"John  and  James  the  apostles  in  Jerusalem";  and  the 
Armenian,  Ethiopic,  Gothico-Gallic  and  Carthaginian  cal- 
endars similarly  mention  the  two  martyred  brothers.1 
Matth.  xx,  23,  and  Mark  x,  39,  imply  that  John  was  to  be, 
or  had  been,  baptized  with  the  same  baptism  of  blood  as 
James.  Whether  this  tradition  rests  upon  a  solid  founda- 
tion of  fact,  and  in  that  case  the  apostle  was  martyred  at 
the  same  time  as  his  brother  or  later,  is  not  easy  to  de- 
termine. It  appears  at  any  rate  to  be  older  than  that  of 
his  long  sojourn  in  Ephesus  and  natural  death  there. 
Papias  carefully  distinguishes  between  John,  the  apostle, 
and  John,  the  presbyter,  the  contemporary  of  Aristion. 
This  presbyter  John  is  also  mentioned  by  Polycrates, 
bishop  of  Ephesus,  ca.  190  A.  D.,  in  connection  with  Poly- 
carp,  Melito  and  their  contemporaries.  Legendary  em- 
bellishments already  cluster  about  his  figure:  he  is  a 
priest  and  wears  the  pontifical  diadem.  It  is  evident  that 
this  John,  the  presbyter,  has  been  confused  with  John,  the 
apostle.  Such  a  merging  of  the  presbyter  into  the  apostle 
probably  occurs  in  John  xxi,  20  ff.  John,  the  presbyter,  is 
already  dead;  hence  the  necessity  of  correcting  the  mis- 
taken idea  that  "the  beloved  disciple"  had  actually  been 
promised  to  live  until  the  return  of  Christ.  The  memory 
of  his  life  far  into  the  second  century  still  lingers  and  sup- 
1  On  these  calendars  see  F.  P.  Badham,  The  Martyrdom  of  John  the 
Apostle,  in  The  American  Journal  of  Theology,  July,  1904,  p.  539  if, 


THE  GOSPELS  211 


plements  in  some  circles  the  defective  information  as  to  the 
later  fortunes  and  end  of  the  life  of  John,  the  apostle.  The 
champions  of  Peter 's  primacy,  who  by  their  addition  to  the 
gospel  made  it  acceptable  to  the  Catholic  Church,  were 
convinced  that  it  came  from  the  hand  of  ' '  the  beloved  dis- 
ciple," unable  to  distinguish  between  the  two  Johns,  but 
anxious  to  prevent  any  rival  claims  by  the  Johannine 
school  based  on  the  widely  reported  saying  of  Jesus  and 
the  developing  legend  of  John's  continued  existence  on 
earth  or  translation.  It  is  impossible  to  prove  that  this 
presbyter  John  who  is  known  through  Papias  only  as  a 
transmitter  of  oral  tradition  had  anything  to  do  with  the 
composition  of  the  Fourth  Gospel,  is  identical  with  "the 
presbyter"  of  the  epistles  whose  name  is  not  given,  or  is 
the  author  of  the  Apocalypse,  or  any  part  of  it.  The 
attempts  to  fasten  upon  him  the  authorship  of  the  gospel 
are  wholly  unconvincing,  in  spite  of  the  names  of  emi- 
nent scholars  that  may  be  cited  in  favor  of  this  conjecture. 
The  value  of  these  efforts  lies  in  the  fact  that  they  have 
revealed  one  of  the  prime  factors  in  the  growth  of  tradi- 
tion. The  ancient  Alogi  and  some  modern  scholars,  nota- 
bly Fries,  ascribed  the  whole  gospel,  or  a  considerable 
part  of  it,  to  Cerinthus.  This  opinion  has  no  more  in- 
trinsic probability,  but  shows  a  correct  appreciation  of  its 
Gnostic  character.  The  same  judgment  applies  to  the 
view  of  Kreyenbiihl  who  regards  Menander  of  Kappare- 
taea,  the  alleged  disciple  of  Simon  Magus  and  probable 
teacher  of  Valentinus  and  Basilides,  as  the  author.  A 
careful  criticism  must  be  satisfied  with  a  non  liquet  on  the 
question  of  authorship. 

When  the  late,  vacillating  and  unreliable  tradition  of 
apostolic  authorship  is  set  aside,  and  the  Fourth  Gospel 
is  compared,  without  prejudice,  with  the  Synoptics,  it  be- 
comes possible  to  understand  its  character.  It  is  in  no 
sense  a  historical  account  of  what  Jesus  said  and  did.  It 
is  significant  that  even  conservative  scholars  find  it  im- 
possible to  maintain  that  the  speeches  it  puts  upon  the 
lips  of  Jesus  were  actually  uttered  by  him,  at  least  in 


212  THE  PKOPHET  OF  NAZARETH 

the  form  given  to  them,  or  to  deny  that  there  are  irrec- 
oncilable conflicts  between  the  historic  framework  and 
the  Synoptic  representation.  Sanday  freely  admits  "in 
this  collection  of  sayings  an  element— possibly  a  some- 
what considerable  element— that  represents  not  so  much 
what  was  actually  spoken  as  enlargement  and  comment 
embodying  the  experience  and  reflection  of  the  growing 
church."1  Any  serious  attempt,  however,  to  separate 
such  enlargements  and  comments  from  the  supposed  genu- 
ine nucleus  only  tends  to  reveal  the  substantial  unity  of 
the  whole  structure.  Some  expansions  there  no  doubt 
were.  But  the  theories  of  Schweizer,  of  Harnack  and 
Bousset,  of  Delff  and  Fries,  by  which  it  has  been  sought 
to  vindicate  a  genuine  kernel  reported  by  the  presbyter 
John  during  the  visits  of  Jesus  to  Jerusalem,  have  failed 
to  commend  themselves  chiefly  for  two  reasons.  How- 
ever small  the  remnant,  it  still  exhibits  the  same  Johan- 
nine  characteristics,  the  same  peculiar  philosophical  style, 
the  same  contrast  to  the  language  ascribed  to  Jesus  in  the 
Synoptics,  the  same  fundamental  difference  from  the 
other  gospels  in  the  conception  of  his  career.  In  some 
respects,  the  source-theory  of  Weisse,  Freytag  and  Wendt 
is  more  plausible.  There  is  no  reason  to  doubt  that  the 
author  may  have  had  before  him  other  sources  than  the 
Synoptics.  It  is  not  inconceivable  that  this  work  was 
preceded  by  another  of  a  similar  character  coming  from 
the  same  Hellenistic  milieu,  very  much  as  the  Chronicles 
were  preceded  by  a  similar  Midrash  on  the  Book  of 
Kings.  But  there  is  no  indication  of  this;  and  the  value 
of  the  discovery  of  any  additional  sources  used  by  the 
evangelist  is  at  once  greatly  reduced  by  observing  the 
manner  in  which  he  deals  with  the  sources  known  to  us 
that  he  obviously  had  at  his  disposal. 

The  freedom  with  which  the  author  uses  his  material  is 
explained  in  part  by  his  philosophy,  in  part  by  his  allegor- 
ical method,  and  in  part  by  his  Christian  experience.  The 

1  Hastings'  Dictionary  of  the  Bible,  Vol.  IV,  1902,  p.  575, 


THE  GOSPELS  213 

Prologue  clearly  indicates  his  philosophical  position.  He 
was  a  disciple  of  Philo  and  a  Christian  Gnostic.  Whether 
he  had  ever  read  the  works  of  Philo  or  not,  it  was  from 
them  that  he  derived  his  great  organizing  idea.  The  more 
intimately  one  becomes  acquainted  with  Philo 's  thought, 
the  more  inevitable  becomes  the  conclusion  that  its  salient 
features  must  have  been  known  to  the  Fourth  Evangelist, 
and  the  more  probable  it  seems,  from  the  repetition  of 
numerous  phrases,  that  the  later  writer  was  actually 
familiar  with  the  works  of  his  predecessor.  It  is  equally 
clear  that  he  was  a  Gnostic.  His  gospel  was  designed  to 
present  Jesus  as  an  incarnate  god ;  a  manifestation  of  the 
divine  Logos  in  a  human  personality;  a  dispenser  to  the 
sons  of  light  of  that  hidden  knowledge,  or  gnosis,  which 
gives  them  eternal  life;  an  emanation  from  the  Supreme 
God  going  forth  into  the  darkness  of  the  Cosmos  and 
returning  to  him,  that  another  emanation,  the  Para- 
clete, may  take  his  place.  Of  his  two  cardinal  ideas  "the 
Logos  was  God"  and  "the  Logos  became  flesh/'  Philo 
supplied  the  former.  The  idea  of  a  divine  incarnation, 
still  foreign  to  Philo 's  speculation,  ultimately  came  from 
India.  Through  Persia  the  belief  in  avatars,  or  divine 
incarnations,  together  with  the  hope  of  redemption 
through  esoteric  knowledge  and  the  conception  of  an  ab- 
solute ethical  dualism,  came  to  Syria,  Egypt  and  Asia 
Minor.  Gnosticism— Pagan,  Jewish  and  Christian— was 
the  result.1  The  Gnostic  philosophy  of  emanation 
through  the  Fourth  Gospel  became  regnant  in  the  Chris- 
tian Church.  The  author  successfully  strove  to  com- 
mend to  the  Church  the  Gnosticism  in  which  he  believed, 
carefully  removing  those  features  of  which  he  could  not 
approve  by  emphasizing,  against  docetic  tendencies,  the 
reality  of  the  incarnation,  the  true  humanity  assumed  by 
the  Logos. 

The  allegorical  method  permitted  him  to  read  his  own 
philosophy  into  the  records  he  had  before  him,  to  ignore 

1  See  Excursus  A. 


214  THE  PROPHET  OF  NAZARETH 

as  of  little  importance,  or  to  lose  sight  of,  literal  sense 
and  historic  fact,  to  seek  for  the  spirit  which  "bloweth 
where  it  listeth, ' '  and  to  symbolize  its  message  in  new  and 
suggestive  forms.  Thus  the  difficulties  in  the  Old  Testa- 
ment so  keenly  felt  by  Gnostics  yielded  to  a  new  species 
of  Gnostic  thought.  The  creation  of  the  world  is  under- 
stood as  an  eternal  procession  of  things  through  the 
Logos.  The  prophetic  inspiration  in  Israel  is  not  thought 
of  as  the  action  of  a  deity  dealing  in  such  a  manner  only 
with  the  Jews,  but  as  the  illumination  offering  itself  im- 
partially to  every  soul  that  comes  into  the  world.  The 
supreme  sacrifice,  the  paschal  lamb,  is  but  a  type  of  the 
true  Lamb  of  God.  The  sacred  feasts  of  the  Passover,  the 
Tabernacles,  the  Dedication  are  but  symbols  whose  real 
meaning  becomes  apparent,  when  the  Logos  offers  his 
flesh  for  food,  his  spirit  for  drink,  his  body  for  a  temple. 
The  Sabbath  itself  is  a  sign,  not  of  rest,  but  of  work,  the 
marvelous  and  everlasting  work  of  God  and  of  the  Logos. 
It  is  not  strange  that  an  author  who  thus  treats  the 
great  ideas  and  institutions  of  the  Old  Testament  should 
reveal  the  same  spirit  in  dealing  with  the  earlier  gospels. 
They  were  seen  in  the  light  of  the  Word  made  flesh. 
There  is  no  story  of  a  conception  by  the  Holy  Ghost  and  a 
virgin  birth  in  this  gospel.  The  Logos  exists  from  eter- 
nity to  eternity.  When  he  appears  in  the  flesh,  he  has  a 
father  as  well  as  a  mother.  But  these  earthly  relations 
have  no  significance;  the  spiritual  relations  alone  are  im- 
portant. Jesus  is  not  baptized  by  John.  He  is  publicly 
recognized  as  the  Messiah  by  the  Baptist,  and  carries  on 
his  work  independently  of  his  predecessor  before  the  ar- 
rest of  the  latter.  There  is  no  Messianic  temptation.  The 
Logos  cannot  be  tempted  with  evil.  There  is  no  conceal- 
ment of  his  Messiahship,  no  injunction  upon  his  disciples 
not  to  proclaim  him  as  the  Messiah.  The  Logos  does  not 
preach  the  coming  of  the  kingdom  of  heaven;  he  points 
incessantly  to  himself.  There  is  no  transfiguration;  the 
cross  is  his  mount  of  transfiguration.  There  is  no  conflict 
with  devils  for  the  healing  of  men,  and  no  confession  of 


THE  GOSPELS  215 


him  as  the  Messiah  by  demons  or  demoniacs.  The  Logos 
cannot  come  into  contact  with  this  world  of  unclean 
spirits.  The  miracles  of  this  gospel  seem  to  be  intended 
as  allegories.  They  are  exaggerated  to  such  a  point  as  to 
raise  at  least  the  question  whether  they  were  at  all  meant 
to  be  taken  as  narratives  of  actual  occurrences.  In  place 
of  the  formalism  of  the  Jews,  with  their  purificatory  rites, 
Jesus  pours  out  his  precious,  joy-giving  wine.  The  bread 
he  multiplies  is  the  heavenly  manna,  himself.  He  restores 
the  sight  of  men  that  they  may  see  the  invisible  glory  of 
the  Son  of  God.  Jesus  eats  no  paschal  meal.  He  is  him- 
self the  paschal  lamb.  Hence  his  death  is  placed,  con- 
trary to  the  Synoptics,  on  the  fourteenth  of  Nisan  when 
the  paschal  lamb  was  slain.  There  is  no  institution  of  the 
Lord's  Supper.  The  author  knows  the  eucharistic  formu- 
las; but  he  maintains  that  "the  flesh  profiteth  nothing"; 
it  is  the  teaching  of  Jesus  that  is  spirit  and  life.  In  the 
place  of  the  eucharist  he  puts  the  foot-washing.  There  is 
no  agony  in  Gethsemane.  There  is  no  cry  of  God-forsak- 
enness on  the  cross.  The  Logos  walks  in  calm  unruffled 
majesty  to  his  glorification.  There  is  no  ascension  after 
forty  days.  The  Logos  breathes  upon  the  disciples  and 
the  Paraclete  is  sent  to  them.  If  some  of  the  material, 
such  as  the  conversations  with  Nicodemus  and  the  Samari- 
tan woman,  the  message  of  Philip  and  the  placing  of  John 
and  Mary  beneath  the  cross,  was  derived  from  other 
gospels  unknown  to  us,  it  has  evidently  gone  through 
the  same  transformation.  The  author's  allegorizing  tend- 
ency is  particularly  manifest  in  the  story  of  the  Samari- 
tan woman  who  clearly  represents  the  Samaritan  people 
that  has  abandoned  its  five  Assyrian  gods,  but  not  at- 
tained to  the  temple-less  worship  of  God  in  spirit  and  in 
truth. 

But  neither  the  influence  of  Alexandrian  and  Oriental 
speculation  nor  the  use  of  allegorical  methods  of  inter- 
pretation can  fully  account  for  the  nature  of  this  most 
remarkable  literary  production  left  to  us  by  Christian 
antiquity.  The  Logos  here  presented  is  no  mere  philo- 


216  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZAKETH 

sophical  abstraction.  By  being  welded  to  the  historical 
personality  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth,  it  has  become  instinct 
with  life,  informed  with  his  spirit,  a  divinely  human  ob- 
ject of  faith,  love  and  devotion.  The  Christ  of  Paul  is  a 
celestial  being,  the  ideal,  archetypal  man,  the  Son  of  God 
by  virtue  of  his  resurrection.  To  have  known  him  accord- 
ing to  the  flesh,  to  be  acquainted  with  his  words  and 
deeds,  is  of  no  importance,  to  live  in  spiritual  communion 
with  the  risen  and  glorified  Lord  is  all-important.  The 
Logos  of  the  Fourth  Gospel  walks  on  earth,  tabernacles  in 
the  flesh,  sends  forth  unceasingly  the  rays  of  his  divine 
glory  through  the  veil  of  his  assumed  humanity,  and  it 
is  here,  in  his  incarnate  existence,  that  the  believer  finds 
him  and  lives  with  him.  This  Christian  experience  is 
genuine  and  sincere;  it  fills  the  author 's  soul  with  life 
and  light  and  joy.  Its  power  does  not  depend  upon  the 
objective  reality  of  such  a  personal  Logos,  nor  upon  the 
historical  character  of  such  an  incarnation  of  a  god.  Its 
source  is  not  the  Philonian  Logos,  but  the  human  life  of 
Jesus.  With  all  its  grandeur,  this  incarnate  god  is  not 
so  great  as  the  humble  teacher  of  Nazareth.  Out  of  his 
fulness  the  Evangelist  received,  "and  grace  for  grace." 
To  have  come  under  the  influence  of  his  spirit  is  Christian 
experience.  To  this  experience  is  due  what  is  permanent 
in  the  thought  of  the  Fourth  Gospel.  Time,  like  an  ever 
rolling  stream,  sweeps  away  what  is  perishable  in  the 
grandest  structures  of  human  speculation.  But  it  pre- 
serves and  enhances  the  value  of  the  things  that  have  in 
them  abiding  substance.  While  the  Johannine  concep- 
tion of  the  Christ  fades  away  before  the  glory  of  the  his- 
toric reality  shining  through  the  Synoptic  representation, 
the  spiritual  freedom  and  insight  of  the  great  evangelist 
become  all  the  more  apparent.  These  were  largely  hid- 
den as  long  as  men  sought  in  his  gospel  what  it  could  not 
give,  more  accurate  information  concerning  the  words 
and  deeds  of  Jesus ;  they  stand  out  in  startling  relief  when 
seen  against  the  background  of  the  crystallizing  traditions 
and  fixed  institutions  of  the  Church  in  the  fourth  decade 


THE  GOSPELS  217 


of  the  second  century.  Had  the  Church  possessed  a  tithe 
of  the  spirit  of  him  who  substituted  a  foot- washing  for  the 
eucharist,  suppressed  the  baptism  of  Jesus,  refused  to  be 
bound  by  gospel-books  and  ecclesiastical  tradition,  found 
life  and  redemption  in  the  essence  and  trend  of  Jesus* 
teaching  and  not  in  forensic  fictions,  understood  that 
"the  letter  killeth"  and  let  his  present  ideal  speak  in 
ways  that  seemed  to  him  true,  stagnation  of  doctrinal 
development,  a  rigid  fixity  of  institutional  character,  and 
a  deadening  imposition  of  external  authority  on  the  con- 
sciences of  men  would  have  been  impossible.  The  inter- 
nal evidence  apparently  indicates  that  the  gospel  was 
written  between  135  and  140  A.  D.,  while  the  reprisals 
taken  by  the  Jews  for  their  sufferings  in  consequence  of 
the  insurrection  under  Simon  bar  Kozeba  were  fresh  in 
mind,  and  it  is  possible  that  John  v,  35,  contains  an  allu- 
sion to  this  Messiah. 

The  Gospels  according  to  Matthew,  Mark  and  Luke 
were  called  by  Griesbach  "  Synoptics, "  and  the  term  has 
been  kept  for  the  sake  of  convenience,  though  it  is  ap- 
parent, on  close  examination,  that  they  are  by  no  means 
written  from  the  same  point  of  view.  The  differences  are 
as  important  a  part  of  the  Synoptic  problem  as  the  simi- 
larities. The  reader  who  turns  from  a  perusal  of  Mat- 
thew to  Mark,  and  then  to  Luke,  finds  himself  going  over 
familiar  ground.  In  Mark  there  is  nothing  that  is  abso- 
lutely new;  in  Luke  there  are  sections  that  contain  new 
material.  But  on  the  whole  the  story  appears  to  be  the 
same.  Yet  the  thoughtful  and  observing  student  is  puz- 
zled to  find  that  very  rarely  the  same  saying  has  been 
given  in  the  same  form  or  put  in  the  same  connection,  and 
that  the  differences  in  the  historic  setting  are  often  very 
marked.  He  is  constantly  forced  to  ask  himself,  Did 
Jesus  actually  utter  the  words  that  Matthew  places  on 
his  lips,  or  those  ascribed  to  him  by  Mark,  or  the  quite 
different  ones  reported  by  Luke?  Which  is  the  more 
original,  and  to  what  accidents  or  conscious  motives  are 
the  changes  due?  Has  the  silence  of  one  or  two  of  the 


218  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZAEETH 

evangelists  in  regard  to  an  important  utterance  any  sig- 
nificance? If  the  authors  transformed  old  sayings,  is  it 
also  likely  that  they  created  new  ones?  To  what  extent 
are  changes  due  to  errors  and  additions  in  transmission 
rather  than  to  the  evangelists  themselves?  Can  they  be 
explained  as  occasioned  by  differences  in  rendering  a  com- 
mon Aramaic  original,  or  were  there  different  Aramaic 
sources?  Was  any  of  our  present  Greek  gospels  directly 
translated  from  an  Aramaic  gospel,  or  does  the  process 
of  individual  rendering  of  Aramaic  sayings  into  Greek 
lie  further  behind  the  process  of  gospel- writing  in  Greek  ? 
Has  any  Greek  gospel  come  down  to  us  in  its  original 
form,  or  have  they  all  suffered  to  some  extent  by  addition 
and  excision,  alteration  and  transposition?  Does  any 
gospel  show  literary  dependence  on  any  other  ?  Have  we 
any  knowledge  of  literary  sources  used  by  the  evangelists  ? 
What  value  should  be  ascribed  to  oral  tradition?  What 
is  likely  to  be  the  date  of  the  present  gospels,  of  these 
gospels  in  their  most  original  form,  and  of  their  sources? 
And  what  degree  of  credibility  can  be  assigned  to  these 
records  of  the  life  and  teaching  of  Jesus  ? 

Thus  one  question  leads  to  another.  In  attempting  to 
answer  them  we  naturally  turn  first  to  the  earliest  ascer- 
tainable  tradition  of  the  church.  The  only  really  impor- 
tant testimony  as  to  Matthew  and  Mark  is  found  in  some 
fragments  of  a  lost  work  of  Papias,  bishop  of  Hierapolis, 
in  Phrygia,  toward  the  middle  of  the  second  century. 
These  fragments  have  been  preserved  by  Eusebius.1 
Papias  declares  that  the  apostle  Matthew  wrote  certain 
Logia,  or  sayings  of  Jesus,  in  "the  Hebrew  dialect"  and 
that  each  man  interpreted  them  in  his  own  way.  He  adds 
that  it  was  his  constant  endeavor  to  secure  information 
concerning  the  words  of  Jesus  from  the  disciples  of  the 
presbyters  who  had  themselves  been  the  disciples  of  the 
apostles.  By  the  "Hebrew  dialect "  he  no  doubt  means 
the  Aramaic  spoken  by  the  Hebrews  of  the  period.  If  he 
had  himself  been  able  to  consult  the  Aramaic  work,  he 

iHist.Eccl,  III,  39,  Iff. 


THE  GOSPELS  219 


would  unquestionably  have  mentioned  so  important  a 
fact.  His  assertion  that  each  man  interpreted  the  Ara- 
maic in  his  own  way  shows  that  he  was  familiar  with  vari- 
ous Greek  gospels  claiming  to  be  translations  of  the  apos- 
tolic work.  He  ascribed  none  of  these  to  the  apostle  Mat- 
thew. Not  having  in  his  possession  any  gospel  on  which 
he  felt  he  could  implicitly  rely,  he  leaned  all  the  more 
heavily  on  oral  tradition.  He  was  glad  to  take  such  tra- 
dition from  the  third  generation.  He  was  acquainted 
with  the  Gospel  according  to  Mark,  and  regarded  this  as 
haivng  been  written  by  a  companion  of  Peter,  under  his 
influence.  Concerning  Luke  and  John  he  knew  nothing. 
It  is  evident  that  a  tradition  that  appears  for  the  first 
time  a  hundred  years  after  the  death  of  Jesus,  and  has 
been  preserved  to  us  only  in  late  excerpts  of  a  work  writ- 
ten about  that  time,  does  not  carry  as  much  weight  as  one 
might  wish.  It  may  simply  record  the  prevalent  view  in 
Asia  Minor  at  the  time  of  Antoninus  Pius  (138-161 
A.  D.).  This  view  may  have  some  foundation  in  fact ;  but 
we  are  unable  to  prove  its  accuracy.  Aside  from  the 
doubtful  identity  of  the  Gospel  according  to  the  Hebrews 
known  to  Jerome  and  others,  it  is  altogether  probable 
that  there  existed  in  Syria  an  Aramaic  gospel.  The  inves- 
tigations in  regard  to  the  term  "son  of  man"  have  con- 
vinced the  present  writer  that  the  so-called  Jerusalem 
Lectionary,  whatever  the  date  of  its  present  form,  has 
been  influenced  by  an  earlier  Aramaic  gospel.1  The  Ara- 
maic speaking  Christians  of  Syria  must  have  had  a  gospel 
of  their  own.  Their  peculiar  doctrinal  position  demanded 
it.  As  their  peculiarities  affected  the  life  and  ministry 
of  Jesus  quite  as  much  as  his  teaching,  it  is  a  priori  prob- 
able that  this  gospel  was  not  merely  a  collection  of  say- 
ings. There  is  also  every  reason  to  believe  that  it  was 
ascribed  to  Matthew.  Papias  had  evidently  heard  that 
such  a  gospel  existed.  His  word  can  of  course  not  prove 
that  it  actually  was  written  by  the  apostle.  The  question 
has  been  much  discussed  whether  the  term  he  uses  shows 
1  Cf .  Encyclopaedia  Biblica,  Vol.  IV,  1903,  cols.  4714,  4727. 


220  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZAEETH 

that  it  was  only  a  collection  of  detached  utterances  or  a 
gospel  giving  a  narrative  of  the  life  of  Jesus  as  well.  The 
analogy  of  Old  Testament  usage  renders  the  latter  alter- 
native more  probable.  We  have  no  collection  of  pro- 
phetic oracles  in  the  Old  Testament  that  is  not  supplied 
with  editorial  superscriptions,  and  accounts  of  events  con- 
nected with  the  lives  of  the  prophets  are  frequently  inter- 
spersed in  the  books  of  the  second  canon.  It  is  also  sig- 
nificant that,  in  spite  of  this  narrative  material,  the  books 
are  given  such  titles  as  The  Words  of  Amos,  The  Words  of 
Jeremiah  and  the  like.  An  Aramaic  work  bearing  the  title 
The  Words  of  Jesus  may  very  well  have  combined  both 
appropriate  headings  and  brief  narratives.  As  the  Sayings 
of  Jesus  found  in  Egypt  clearly  do  not  go  back  to  any  Ara- 
maic original,  these  extracts  from  some  current  gospel 
have  no  bearing  on  the  question. 

It  would  be  hazardous  to  affirm  that  the  work  of  whose 
existence  Papias  was  aware  originally  came  from  the  hand 
of  Matthew.  As  this  apostle  was  said  to  have  been  a 
publican,  tradition  may  have  seized  upon  him  as  the  most 
likely  to  have  been  the  author.  If  the  book  was  called 
The  Words  of  Jesus,  it  is  likely  to  have  been  at  first 
anonymous,  and  the  analogy  of  Hebrew  usage  may  be  in- 
structive also  on  this  point.  The  disciples  of  famous 
rabbis  would,  first  of  all,  seek  to  preserve  in  memory  and 
to  transmit  by  word  of  mouth  the  utterances  of  their 
teachers.  As  aids  to  memory,  however,  they  would  per- 
mit themselves  the  use  of  memoranda.  To  this  method 
we  owe,  in  a  large  measure,  the  enormous  Talmudic  col- 
lections. It  is  not  impossible  that  some  disciples  of  Jesus  in 
old  age  wrote  down  in  his  vernacular  such  words  and 
incidents  as  he  remembered.  The  remarkable  preserva- 
tion of  an  earlier  strand  of  tradition  out  of  harmony  with 
the  prevailing  view  of  Jesus  in  a  later  age  may  be  cited 
in  favor  of  this  theory.  Even  more  probability  attaches 
to  another  theory  also  based  on  Hebrew  customs.  The 
transmission  of  the  decisions  of  a  rabbi  in  the  name  of 
one  of  his  disciples  is  exceedingly  common  in  the  Tal- 


THE  GOSPELS  221 


mud.  Similarly,  a  Christian  belonging  to  the  second  gen- 
eration may  have  given  the  words  of  Jesus  on  the  au- 
thority of  Matthew,  and  not  relying  on  his  memory,  as 
the  immediate  disciple  might,  he  may  have  written  down 
many  a  saying  and  provided  it  with  its  historic  setting. 
The  Aramaic  gospel  may  in  this  sense  have  been  from  its 
inception  a  gospel ' 1  according  to  Matthew. "  It  no  doubt 
grew  by  gradual  expansion,  but  unfortunately  we  have  no 
means  of  determining  its  extent  at  the  time  when  it  was 
first  translated  into  Greek. 

What  is  the  relation  of  our  Greek  Matthew  to  the  orig- 
inal Aramaic  gospel?  Papias  singles  out  no  version  as 
more  authoritative  than  any  other,  and  evidently  dis- 
trusts them  all.  If  it  really  was  one  of  the  translations 
with  which  he  was  familiar  that  won  recognition  as  the 
Gospel  according  to  Matthew,  it  is  likely  to  have  gained 
this  distinction  above  the  others  later  than  his  time. 
When  the  present  text  of  Matthew  is  critically  examined, 
it  is  readily  perceived  that  it  cannot  be  a  translation  of  an 
Aramaic  original.  The  fact  that,  at  least  in  the  vast 
majority  of  instances,  the  quotations  from  the  Old  Testa- 
ment are  taken  from  the  Greek  version  is  alone  decisive 
against  such  an  assumption.1  But  while  the  present  text 
cannot  have  been  a  rendering  of  a  Semitic  original,  its 
most  remote  ancestor  in  the  second  century  may.  There 
are  numerous  indications  that  the  First  Gospel  has  under- 
gone various  changes— some  of  them  of  a  most  momentous 
character— before  the  end  of  the  fourth  century.  Cony- 
beare2  has  shown  that  before  the  Council  of  Nicaea  in  325 

1  Even  in  regard  to  those  quotations  which  do  not  quite  correspond 
to  the  ordinary  tests  of  the  so-called  Septuagint  Version,  it  is  very 
probable  that  they  came  from  a  Greek  version.  If  the  differences 
are  not  merely  due  to  earlier  variants  supplanted  in  the  leading  ma- 
juscules by  others,  they  may  represent  another  Greek  version  or  text- 
recension,  of  which  there  is  considerable  evidence.  The  supposition 
that  any  editor  of  the  gospel  used  the  Hebrew  text  is  less  likely  than 
that  the  Greek  texts  consulted  by  those  to  whom  we  owe  the  gospel 
exhibited  certain  differences. 

*Zeitschrift  fur  Neutestamentliche  Wissenschaft,  1903. 


222  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZAEETH 

A.  D.  Eusebius  again  and  again  quoted  the  Great  Commis- 
sion in  Matthew  xxviii,  19,  as  follows:  "Go  ye,  there- 
fore, and  make  disciples  of  all  the  nations  in  my  name," 
and  he  has  rendered  it  probable  that  the  ultimately  pre- 
vailing form,  including  the  commandment  to  baptize  and 
the  trinitarian  formula,  represents  an  expansion  made 
in  some  locality  and  gradually  finding  its  way  to  the  dif- 
ferent parts  of  the  Church.  But  even  the  unexpanded 
form  is  clearly  a  later  addition.  Most  critics  recognize 
that  the  conferring  of  the  primacy  on  Peter  in  Matthew 
xvi,  18, 19,  is  a  similar  expansion  of  the  text  in  the  interest 
of  the  growing  Roman  hierarchy.  But  Matth.  xvi,  17,  is 
no  doubt  also  a  later  addition.  It  was  seen  already  in  the 
Early  Church  and  again  by  Baptist  scholars  in  the  six- 
teenth century  and  modern  exegetes  that  the  first  two 
chapters  of  the  gospel  had  been  subsequently  placed  be- 
fore the  beginning  of  the  original  text.  Some  earlier 
exordium  was  probably  displaced,  as  the  first  verse  of 
the  third  chapter  indicates.  When  it  is  observed  that  the 
majority  of  Old  Testament  quotations  are  found  in  these 
chapters,  the  suggestion  naturally  offers  itself  that  the 
hand  which  wrote  the  story  of  the  birth  and  infancy  also 
introduced  in  the  rest  of  the  gospel  references  to  the  ful- 
filment of  Old  Testament  prophecies.  As  the  opening 
chapters  themselves  have  manifestly  undergone  at  least 
one  redaction,  seeing  that  the  author  of  Joseph 's  pedi- 
gree cannot  have  written  the  narrative  of  the  virgin  birth, 
it  is  also  possible  that  some  of  these  often  loosely  attached 
observations  on  the  fulfilment  of  prophecy  are  due  to  a 
later  editor. 

But  even  when  these  palpable  additions  are  removed, 
it  is  quite  inconceivable  that  the  remainder  can  be  the 
work  of  the  same  author.  That  the  writer  who  chose  to 
record  the  attacks  of  Jesus  upon  fundamental  principles 
of  the  Mosaic  law  should  have  neutralized  the  effect  of 
these  criticisms  by  introducing  statements  censuring  the 
least  deviation  from  the  letter  of  the  Law,  such  as  are 
found  in  Matth.  vi,  17-19,  can  no  more  be  comprehended 


THE  GOSPELS  223 


than  that  Jesus  himself  should  have  uttered  the  self- 
condemnatory  words.  This  is  but  one  example  among 
many  showing  that  the  original  gospel  has  suffered  inter- 
polations. These  accretions  are  so  different  in  character 
that  it  is  difficult  to  understand  them  as  the  result  of 
systematic  redaction.  Hilgenfeld1  recognized  these  facts 
more  clearly  than  any  other  scholar.  Whether  he  was 
correct  in  explaining  them  by  subsequent  editorial  proc- 
esses in  different  schools,  is  more  doubtful.  The  First 
Gospel  seems  to  have  been  more  widely  used  than  any 
of  the  others  owing  to  its  age  and  assumed  apostolic  au- 
thority. It  is  therefore  natural  that  it  should  have 
received  more  marginal  glosses,  emendations,  interpolated 
sections,  and  doctrinal  enlargements.  It  is  a  common  oc- 
currence that  an  ancient,  greatly  cherished,  and  fre- 
quently copied  manuscript  thus  gathers  about  it  more  ma- 
terial foreign  to  the  original  text  than  later  and  inferior 
codices.2  If  this  process  is  duly  considered,  it  is  easy  to 
believe  that  the  Greek  Matthew  in  its  earliest  form  may 
have  been  a  translation  of  an  Aramaic  gospel,  and  there 
is  nothing  to  prevent  the  assumption  that  it  was  one  of 
several  renderings  of  the  gospel  ascribed  to  Matthew, 
having  certain  peculiarities  that  made  its  claim  to  ac- 
curacy appear  most  plausible. 

Such  considerations  also  give  added  credibility  to  the 
uniform  tradition  of  the  Early  Church  that  the  Gospel 
according  to  Matthew  is  the  oldest  of  the  Synoptics. 
Against  this  tradition  and  in  favor  of  the  priority  of  Mark 
it  has  been  urged,  that  the  latter  is  shorter  than  the  others, 
that  practically  all  that  it  contains  is  also  found  in  the 
others,  and  that  the  historic  development  of  Jesus'  career 
comes  out  more  clearly  in  it  than  in  the  others.  But  it  is 
quite  impossible  to  determine  whether  Matthew  in  its  earl- 

1  See  especially  his  Einleitung  in  das  Neue  Testament,  1875,  and  his 
Zeitschrift  fur  Wissenschaftliche  Theologie,  passim. 

2  An  interesting  illustration  of  this  may  be  seen  in  Codex  Venetus 
of  Ecclesiasticus ;  see  Schmidt,  The  Boole  of  Ecclesiasticus,  1903,  p. 
xxiii  ff . 


224  THE  PEOPHET  OF  tfAZAKETH 

iest  Greek  form  was  more  extensive  than  Mark.  As  Mark 
clearly  adressed  himself  to  a  different  class  of  readers 
and  had  a  different  purpose,  he  may  have  made  a  selec- 
tion. The  assumption  that  he  comprehended  the  growth 
of  Jesus'  Messianic  consciousness  and  the  gradual  un- 
folding of  his  Messianic  programme  better  than  the  other 
evangelists  is  not  well  founded.  It  is  supposed  that  he 
alone  understood  the  importance  of  the  episode  at  Cae- 
sarea  Philippi,  and  realized  that  this  was  the  turning-point 
in  the  career  of  Jesus,  the  time  when  he  first  revealed  the 
secret  of  his  Messiahship.  But  Mark,  who  clearly  uses 
the  term  "Son  of  Man"  as  a  Messianic  title,  puts  this  as  a 
self-designation  on  the  lips  of  Jesus  before  the  visit  to 
Caesarea  Philippi.  Concerning  the  real  nature  of  this 
term  he  shows  no  more  knowledge  than  Matthew,  and 
the  true  significance  of  Jesus'  question  to  his  disciples 
appears  to  have  been  as  little  recognized  by  him  as  by 
Matthew.  The  early  tradition  that  Jesus  never  assumed 
for  himself  any  unmistakable  Messianic  title  and  actually 
forbade  his  disciples  to  say  that  he  was  the  Messiah,  facts 
which  in  the  light  of  the  conviction  of  his  disciples  that 
he  was  the  Messiah  were  naturally  interpreted  as  signify- 
ing that  during  his  life-time  he  had  wished  his  official 
character  to  be  unknown,  is  better  preserved  in  Matthew 
than  in  Mark.  For  the  former1  allows  Jesus  to  preserve 
his  Messianic  incognito  to  the  end,  even  in  the  presence 
of  the  high-priest,  while  the  latter,2  contrary  to  both  Mat- 
thew and  Luke,  makes  Jesus  distinctly  affirm  to  an  out- 
sider his  Messiahship. 

Papias  connected  the  Second  Gospel  directly  with  Mark, 
and  indirectly  with  Peter.  The  latter  must  be  regarded 
as  an  after-thought.  There  is  every  reason  to  believe  that 
the  gospel  was  written  in  Rome.  We  have  no  trustworthy 
historic  evidence  that  Peter  was  ever  in  Rome.  But  as 


.,  xxvi,  64,  "Thou  sayest"  (not  I)  ;  similarly,  Luke  xxii,  70: 
'  '  Ye  say  that  I  am.  '  '  Of.  Merx,  Das  Evangelium  Matthdus,  1902,  p. 
391  ff. 

*MarTc,  xiv,  62,  "lam." 


THE  GOSPELS  225 


the  tradition  developed  that  he  had  been  the  first  bishop 
of  Rome,  the  desire  would  naturally  be  felt  to  give  his 
authority  to  the  gospel  recognized  in  that  church.  An 
earlier  tradition  that  it  was  written  by  Mark  could  not  be 
set  aside ;  but  it  was  possible  to  bring  the  author  into  con- 
nection with  Peter.  Who  the  Mark  was  on  whose  au- 
thority it  was  presented,  we  do  not  know.  There  is  no 
tradition  to  the  effect  that  it  was  originally  written  in 
Aramaic,  and  it  does  not  have  the  appearance  of  being  a 
translation.  The  emphasis  given  to  the  thaumaturgical 
powers  of  Jesus,  his  successful  exorcisms,  and  his  relations 
to  the  world  of  demons  who  know  the  secret  of  his  Mes- 
siahship,  is  precisely  what  might  be  expected  in  a  Hellen- 
istic Jew  writing  with  the  view  to  convincing  Romans  of 
his  supernatural  greatness  and  authority.  That  the 
writer  was  familiar  with  the  Greek  Matthew,  is  alto- 
gether probable.  He  adds  no  important  new  material. 
But  his  variations  show  that  he  exercised  the  same  lib- 
erty, and  consulted  the  form  of  oral  tradition  prevalent  in 
his  circle  in  the  same  manner,  as  all  other  early  Christian 
writers  with  whom  we  are  familiar.  There  is  nowhere 
any  leaning  upon  an  absolutely  authoritative  source.  As 
a  writer  Mark  distinguishes  himself  favorably  by  his 
conciseness  of  statement,  his  vivid  style,  and  his  local 
coloring.  His  gospel  has  remained  comparatively  free 
from  later  additions.  No  one  added  to  it  a  gospel  of  the 
infancy,  as  in  the  case  of  the  other  Synoptics.  The  orig- 
inal ending  seems  to  be  lost.  A  substitute  found  its  way 
into  many  copies.  Aristion  has  been  supposed  to  be  its 
author,  but  on  insufficient  grounds.1  Another  shorter 
substitute  has  also  been  preserved,  which  is  of  still  later 
origin. 

The  Third  Gospel  apparently  at  one  time  circulated 
without  the  name  of  Luke.  Marcion  was  familiar  with  a 
gospel  exhibiting  so  marked  a  similarity  to  the  Gospel 
according  to  Luke  that  there  is  scarcely  room  for  doubt 

^ee  P.  Eohrbach,  Der  Schluss  des  Marcus  Evangeliums,  1894; 
Conybeare,  Expositor,  1893,  p.  241  ff. 
15 


226  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZAEETH 

as  to  its  substantial  identity.     But  it  does  not  seem  to  have 
had  the  name  of  Luke  attached  to  it,  and  it  showed  some 
important  deviations  from  the  present  form.     The  first 
two  chapters  were  lacking,  and  here  and  there  different 
readings  were  found.     It  is  possible  that  the  gospel  had 
already  suffered  somewhat  through  the  bias  of  Ebionitish 
and  Gnostic  copyists,  as  it  certainly  has  suffered  since 
through  the  prepossessions  of  Catholic  scribes.     Whether 
Marcion's  gospel  contained  the  Preface  i,  1-4,  is  uncertain, 
but  cannot  be  said  to  be  improbable.      It  does  not  men- 
tion the  name  of  the  writer,  and  gives  no  clue  to  the 
authorship  to  anyone  who  has  no  independent  knowledge 
of  who  the  friend  of  Theophilus  was.     Such  knowledge 
we  do  not  possess,  and  it  may  be  questioned  whether  Mar- 
cion  did.     There  is  no  reason  to  doubt  the  identity  of  the 
author  of  the  gospel  with  the  compiler  of  Acts.     As  one 
of  the  sources  used  by  the  latter  may  have  been  written 
by  Luke,  the  companion  of  Paul,  it  is  easy  to  account  for 
the  tradition  that  makes  him  the  author  of  both  works. 
There  is  no  claim  to  Lukan  authorship  in  the  preface  to 
either,  and  the  internal  evidence  is  strongly  against  the 
assumption  that  the  author  of  the  We-Source  had  any- 
thing to  do  with  the  composition  of  the  larger  works. 
From  the  preface  we  gain  the  same  impression  as  from  the 
fragments   of  Papias.      The   author   is   acquainted   with 
numerous  gospels,  is  displeased  with  their  lack  of  order 
and  incompleteness,  distrusts  their  accuracy,  and  draws 
upon  the  living  streams  of  tradition.     Among  the  gospels 
that  he  had  at  his  disposal,  Matthew,  Mark  and  an  other- 
wise unknown  work  largely  used  in  the  section,  ix,  51- 
xviii,  14,  seem  to  have  been  the  most  important.     That  he 
wrote  later  than  Matthew  and  Mark  is  to-day  generally 
acknowledged  by  critics;  that  he  knew  his  predecessors 
and  derived  the  bulk  of  his  information  from  them  is  the 
most  natural  conclusion,  though  it  has  been  questioned  by 
some.    It  appears  to  the  present  writer  a  serious  mistake 
to  begin  the  comparison  of  Matthew  and  Luke  with  the 
first  two  chapters  of  each,  and  to  allow  the  result  to  influ- 


THE  GOSPELS  227 


ence  the  final  decision.  Both  of  these  gospels  of  the  in- 
fancy are  later  additions  and  themselves  of  highly  com- 
posite character.  Luke  i,  5-ii,  52,  iii,  23-38,  forms  a  sec- 
tion made  up  of  extracts  from  a  Book  of  Zechariah;  a 
Jewish  Psalm,  wrongly  ascribed  first  to  Elizabeth,  and 
then  in  the  majority  of  manuscripts  to  Mary;  a  story  of 
the  birth  of  Jesus  as  the  son  of  Joseph  and  Mary,  sub- 
sequently re-touched  by  an  editor  believing  in  the  virgin- 
birth;  and  a  genealogy  intended  to  prove  that  the  father 
of  Jesus  was  a  descendant  of  David.  Even  if  it  were 
easier  than  it  is  to  determine  the  relation  of  the  various 
elements  entering  into  this  composition  to  the  gospel  of 
the  infancy  in  Matthew,  little  light  would  be  thrown  by 
it  on  the  relative  age  of  the  gospels  of  the  ministry  of 
Jesus  to  which  they  have  been  prefixed. 

As  we  do  not  know  either  the  general  character  or 
the  age  of  the  source  upon  which  the  author  has  drawn  for 
the  material  not  found  in  the  other  Synoptics,  no  inference 
is  possible  as  to  his  own  age  and  attitude  toward  Matthew 
and  Mark  from  his  use  of  it.  Nor  does  the  peculiar  form 
in  which  he  quotes  the  Synoptic  apocalypse  allow  any  con- 
clusion in  reference  to  its  wording  in  the  text  that  lies 
behind  all  the  three  evangelists.  The  attempts  to  solve 
these  problems  by  the  so-called  "Two-Source  Theory " 
cannot  be  regarded  as  successful.  According  to  this 
theory,  in  its  most  popular  and  plausible  form,  the  authors 
of  Matthew  and  Luke  had  before  them  the  Gospel  of  Mark, 
and  all  three  made  use  of  a  collection  of  Sayings  of  Jesus 
written  in  Greek  and  now  lost.  The  more  closely  the  Gos- 
pel of  Mark  is  compared  with  what  may  be  regarded  as 
the  most  original  form  of  Matthew  both  as  respects  the 
utterances  of  Jesus  and  the  general  character  of  his  min- 
istry, the  more  difficult  it  is  to  maintain  the  priority  of 
Mark.  While  there  is  no  a  priori  objection  to  supposing 
that  among  the  early  Christian  works  that  have  been 
lost  there  once  was  such  a  Logia  Jesu  as  many  modern 
scholars  resort  to  for  the  explanation  of  the  Synoptic 
problem,  the  hypothesis  seems  unnecessary,  has  no  foun- 


228  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZAKETH 

dation  in  early  tradition,  and  is  only  productive  of  new 
difficulties.  If  Mark  only  occasionally  used  this  source, 
deriving  his  information  in  the  main  from  some  living  au- 
thority or  some  other  gospel,  why  should  he  have  copied 
the  few  sayings  so  differently  from  Matthew  and  Luke, 
and  why  should  he  have  passed  by  so  much  genuine  and 
valuable  material  in  a  book  he  deemed  worthy  of  use? 
If  Matthew  was  anxious,  as  he  apparently  was,  to  com- 
municate all  that  Jesus  said,  why  should  he  have  delib- 
erately left  out  such  precious  parables  as  those  of  the 
Lost  Coin,  the  Lost  Sheep,  the  Lost  Son,  the  Good  Samari- 
tan, the  Pharisee  and  the  Publican  and  the  Rich  Man  and 
Lazarus?  If  Luke  drew  most  extensively  from  this 
source,  how  are  the  similar  omissions  in  his  gospel  and 
the  apparent  looseness  of  quotation  in  numerous  places 
to  be  accounted  for  ?  Is  it  to  be  supposed  that  Mark  failed 
to  appreciate  the  beauty  of  the  Lord's  Prayer,  and  that 
neither  Matthew  nor  Mark  was  moved  by  the  pathos  of 
the  Prodigal  Son?  If  such  a  book  existed  coming  with 
the  authority  of  an  apostle  and  commending  itself  to  the 
evangelists  so  highly  that  they  actually  copied  from  it 
the  words  of  Jesus,  is  it  likely  that  the  result  should  have 
been  the  numerous  variants  in  the  simplest  sayings  and 
the  peculiar  selection  of  material  ?  It  is  difficult  to  avoid 
the  impression  that  forces  have  been  at  work  in  the  pro- 
duction of  our  gospels  that  would  have  been  checked,  if 
the  method  had  been  that  of  simply  copying  a  common, 
authoritative  document. 

The  individual  freedom  that  under  all  circumstances 
must  be  granted,  and  the  peculiar  relations  of  the  three 
writers,  seem  to  find  their  most  natural  explanation,  if 
it  is  supposed,  in  harmony  with  the  earliest  tradition,  that 
the  First  Evangelist  translated  his  work  from  an  Aramaic 
original  ascribed  to  Matthew,  that  the  Second  Evangelist 
looked  upon  this  Greek  gospel  as  one  of  many  more  or  less 
doubtful  attempts  to  render  the  original  text,  adopted 
its  general  outline  and  drew  upon  it  largely  but  also 
leaned  on  the  tradition  of  his  church,  and  that  the  Third 


THE  GOSPELS  229 


Evangelist  used  his  two  predecessors,  without  assign- 
ing to  them  any  higher  authority  than  that  of  at  least  one 
other  gospel  which  he  used,  but  also  endeavored  to  find 
through  oral  sources  what  the  truth  was,  and  quoted  the 
sayings  of  Jesus  in  the  form  familiar  to  him  from  the 
usage  of  his  church  or  province.  The  first  translations  of 
the  words  of  Jesus  were  no  doubt  made  in  a  manner  simi- 
lar to  the  first  translations  of  the  Hebrew  Scriptures 
among  Hellenistic  Jews.  They  were  Targums.  To  sup- 
plement the  imperfect  knowledge  of  the  sacred  language 
a  methurgeman  rendered  into  the  vernacular  section  by 
section  the  text  read.  Thus  the  extant  Aramaic  Targums 
and  the  earlier  Greek  versions  came  into  existence.  How 
much  freedom  the  interpreter  might  use  depended  on  his 
own  judgment  and  the  importance  of  what  he  explained. 
We  are  only  too  well  acquainted  with  the  liberties  taken 
by  some,  while  we  admire  the  accuracy  and  skill  of  others. 
In  the  case  of  the  Old  Testament  we  are  fortunate  enough 
to  have,  if  not  the  original  text,  at  least  one  of  its  direct 
descendants  speaking  its  own  language.  The  Aramaic 
gospel  is  lost,  and  not  a  single  saying  of  Jesus  has  come 
down  to  us  in  his  own  vernacular  through  any  channel. 
The  Greek  gospels  themselves  have  undergone  so  many 
changes  that  we  are  in  a  far  worse  plight  than  those  who 
could  examine  the  first  drafts  of  these  documents. 

In  attempting  to  fix  the  dates  of  the  Synoptic  gospels, 
it  is  of  the  utmost  importance  to  bear  in  mind  what  may 
be  ascertained  concerning  the  composition  of  these  works. 
When  so  careful  a  critic  as  Pfleiderer1  allows  himself  to  be 
influenced  by  some  of  the  most  obvious  interpolations  in 
Matthew  to  date  the  entire  gospel  in  ca.  140  A.  D.,  a  caveat 
is  necessary.  What  would  be  thought  of  an  Old  Testa- 
ment critic  who  would  place  the  whole  Book  of  Amos  in 
the  Babylonian  Exile,  or  the  entire  Books  of  Isaiah  and 
Jeremiah  in  the  Maccabaean  age  because  of  the  sections 
that  unmistakably  come  from  these  late  periods?  Stu- 
dents of  the  Old  Testament  have  learnt  to  distinguish 

lDas  TJrchristentum*,  1902. 


230  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZAEETH 

between  the  age  of  a  book  in  substantially  its  present  form 
and  the  age  of  its  various  component  parts.  Some  parts 
of  our  Matthew  may  be  later  than  Pfleiderer's  date  for  the 
book.  The  value  of  determining  when  even  the  smallest 
and  youngest  section  was  written  should  not  be  under- 
estimated. But  the  main  interest  is  to  discover,  if  pos- 
sible, the  date  of  the  earliest  part.  When  was  the  first 
draft  made  of  the  Greek  Matthew?  Three  facts  may 
throw  some  light  on  this  question.  Eusebius1  records 
that  in  the  reign  of  Trajan  (98-117  A.  D.)  "many  disciples, 
full  of  zeal  for  the  divine  word,  followed  the  old  exhorta- 
tion of  the  Saviour,  distributed  their  goods  to  the  poor, 
left  their  country  and  became  evangelists,  holding  it  to 
be  an  honor  to  preach  the  doctrine  of  the  faith  to  those  to 
whom  it  was  unknown,  and  to  place  in  their  hands  the 
written  text  of  the  divine  gospels/'  This  is  evidently  the 
reflection  of  a  historic  fact.  The  presentation  in  Greek  of 
the  Aramaic  gospel  ascribed  to  Matthew  was  coincident 
with  the  break  of  the  Jewish  Christian  Church  in  Pales- 
tine with  Judaism  and  the  consequent  devotion  of  many 
of  its  members  to  a  missionary  propaganda  among  the 
Gentiles.  The  appearance  of  other  gospels  in  Greek, 
whether  as  translations  of  the  Aramaic  gospel,  or  as  inde- 
pendent accounts  soon  after  the  first,  made  the  epoch 
memorable ;  and  it  is  by  no  means  improbable  that  the  first 
interpreters  were  at  the  same  time  exhorters,  evangelists 
in  every  sense  of  the  word.  If  the  tradition,  naturally 
somewhat  misunderstood  by  Eusebius,  is  well  founded,  it 
may  signify  that  Matthew,  Mark  and  Luke  in  their  earli- 
est Greek  form  appeared  in  the  beginning  of  the  second 
century. 

Another  fact  points  in  the  same  direction.  The  Synop- 
tic apocalypse  manifestly  comes  from  a  Semitic  original, 
but  the  differences  between  the  three  versions  are  not  such 
as  can  be  explained  by  peculiarities  of  translation.  That 
it  has  gone  from  Matthew  to  Mark,  and  from  both  to 

lHist.Eccl.,  Ill,  37,  2. 


THE  GOSPELS  231 


Luke,  is  seen  on  careful  examination.  Matthew  has  pre- 
served the  expectation  of  the  coming  of  the  Messiah  im- 
mediately after  the  distress  of  the  siege  of  Jerusalem,1 
the  anxiety  lest  the  flight  be  on  the  sabbath,  and  the  em- 
phasis on  the  conflict  with  heathen  nations.  Mark  can  no 
longer  write  "immediately  after  the  distress  of  those 
days,"  eliminates  the  reference  to  the  sabbath,  and  intro- 
duces persecutions  in  synagogues,  and  before  governors 
and  kings.  Luke  follows  his  example,  but  goes  beyond 
him  by  placing  "the  times  of  the  Gentiles "  when  they 
shall  trample  Jerusalem  under  foot  between  the  destruc- 
tion of  the  city  and  the  advent  of  the  Messiah.  Well- 
hausen  has  convincingly  shown  that  the  Aramaic  apoca- 
lypse originated  in  the  days  of  the  siege  of  Jerusalem,  and 
he  is  probably  right  in  regarding  it  as  a  non-Christian 
product.  Whether  it  was  appropriated  to  Christian  use 
and  placed  on  the  lips  of  Jesus  already  by  the  author  of 
the  Aramaic  gospel,  or  circulated  independently  in  a 
Greek  translation  and  was  subsequently  incorporated  in 
the  Greek  Matthew,  is  a  delicate  question  to  answer.  In 
favor  of  the  latter  alternative  it  may  bj  said  that  the 
Son  of  Man  as  a  Messianic  title,  not  found  as  yet  in  the 
apocalypses  of  the  reign  of  Domitian  (81-96  A.  D.), 
Baruch,  Ezra,  the  original  Parables  of  Enoch,  and  John, 
seems  to  have  appeared  for  the  first  time  in  Christian 
writings  in  the  Greek  translation  of  this  apocalypse,  and 
that  the  Gnostic  influence  of  the  conception  of  a  Celestial 
Son  of  the  Macrocosmic  Man,  ultimately  of  Indian  origin, 
which  at  any  rate  facilitated  the  introduction  of  the  in- 

1  It  is  faithfulness  to  the  text  before  him,  and  not  nearness  to  the 
catastrophe,  that  is  the  cause  of  this  preservation  of  the  original  form, 
though  it  may  be  questioned  whether  Matthew  understood  the  quoted 
apocalypse  to  affirm  the  coming  of  the  Messiah  within  a  month,  or  a 
year,  or  a  generation.  Matthew  realized  that  concerning  the  exact 
time  no  man  and  not  even  the  angels  of  the  heavens,  but  only  the 
Father,  had  any  knowledge.  "Not  even  the  Son"  is  an  addition  prob- 
ably made  in  the  second  half  of  the  second  century,  not  found  in  our 
earliest  witnesses  to  the  text.  There  is  probably  an  interpolation 
also  in  Mark,  though  the  testimony  is  less  conclusive. 


THE  PEOPHET  OF  KAZAEETH 


felicitous  rendering  of  the  Aramaic  bar-nasha,  cannot  so 
easily  be  understood  in  the  case  of  the  translator  of  the 
whole  gospel,  who  nowhere  else  shows  any  sign  of  similar 
tendencies.  Yet  this  apocalypse  must  have  been  inter- 
polated at  an  early  time,  as  it  found  its  way  through  Mat- 
thew into  Mark  and  Luke.  A  date  subsequent  to  the 
reign  of  Domitian  is  probable. 

A  third  indication  of  the  same  period  is  the  use  of  the 
book  entitled  The  Wisdom  of  God  by  Matthew  and  Luke. 
Its  name  is  given  only  by  Luke,1  but  it  seems  to  have  been 
already  quoted  by  Matthew.2  A  generation  must  be  sup- 
posed to  have  elapsed  before  a  reference  to  the  murder  of 
Zechariah,  the  son  of  Barachiah,  during  the  siege  of  Jeru- 
salem can  have  been  placed  on  the  lips  of  Jesus.  The 
Wisdom  of  God  evidently  lay  before  these  authors  (or  at 
least  before  Luke,  if  the  passage  in  Matthew  is  an  inter- 
polation) in  a  Greek  text.  Even  if  no  other  part  of  this 
work  were  known  to  us  than  the  words  immediately 
quoted,  this  quotation  alone  would  show  that  the  writer, 
or  writers,  who  used  it  belonged  to  a  time  far  subsequent 
to  the  fall  of  Jerusalem  in  70  A.  D.  It  is  not  improbable, 
however,  that  the  Synoptic  apocalypse  once  was  incorpor- 
ated in  it,  and  together  with  its  other  parts  translated 
into  Greek  under  the  title  The  Wisdom  of  God.  But  the 
argument  from  the  character  of  each  section  as  to  the 
late  date  of  the  gospels  would  in  no  wise  be  invalidated,  if 
they  should  prove  to  have  been  at  all  times  two  independ- 
ent works.  That  the  Greek  texts  of  Matthew,  Mark  and 
Luke,  in  their  most  primitive  form,  are  not  likely  to  have 
been  written  before  the  reign  of  Trajan,  seems  to  be  the 
inevitable  conclusion  from  all  the  facts  observed.  So  far 
as  Luke  is  concerned  his  acquaintance  with  the  Antiqui- 
ties of  Josephus  remains  a  fact,  even  when  the  story  of  the 
infancy  is  ascribed  to  later  hands,  and  clearly  indicates 
that  he  wrote  in  the  second  century. 

If  none  of  the  gospels,  then,  that  we  can  consult  were 
1 XI,  49. 

2  XXIII,  34  ff. 


THE  GOSPELS 


written  by  apostles  or  eye-witnesses,  or  existed  at  all 
before  some  sixty  years  or  more  had  passed  since  the 
death  of  Jesus,  to  what  extent  can  such  accounts  be  re- 
garded as  trustworthy  ?  Is  it  possible  to  lay  down  a  line 
of  evidence  by  which  a  nucleus  of  historic  facts  can  be 
rendered  probable?  Can  the  historic  figure  be  at  all  dis- 
cerned through  the  veil  of  myth  and  legend?  Can  the 
words  he  actually  uttered  be  gathered  from  these  late 
translations,  suffering  from  a  host  of  accidental  or  inten- 
tional changes,  weighed  down  with  layer  after  layer  of 
corrections,  comments  and  interpolations?  Is  it  possible 
to  prove  even  the  historic  existence  of  the  teacher  of  Naz- 
areth? Such  questions  are  not  asked  only  by  blind  unbe- 
lief, determined  incredulity,  antipathy  to  the  character 
portrayed,  and  a  perverse  moral  attitude,  preferring  per- 
manent doubt  to  an  unwelcome  truth ;  but  also,  and  most 
insistently,  by  legitimate  historic  investigation,  eager  for 
the  truth,  patient  in  the  search  for  it,  grateful  for  every 
discovery,  willing  to  hold  or  to  abandon  a  position  as  the 
facts  seem  to  demand,  ready  to  doubt  in  order  that  faith 
may  rest  on  tested  foundations,  rejoicing  in  the  advance 
of  knowledge,  capable  of  appreciation,  and  sympathetic 
with  the  great  facts  and  factors  in  the  religious  history  of 
man. 

The  present  writer  has  considered  every  such  question 
that  has  occurred  to  his  mind.  The  more  radical  and  far- 
reaching  they  have  been,  the  more  urgent  and  important 
they  seemed  to  him.  So  far  as  he  is  aware,  the  results 
were  never  dictated  by  his  desire,  or  shaped  by  his  prepos- 
session. If  an  honest  dealing  with  the  facts  should  have 
seemed  to  lead  to  a  negative  answer  to  all  these  inquiries, 
he  trusts  that  he  would  have  had  the  moral  fortitude  to 
abide  by  his  convictions,  the  confidence  that  somehow  the 
truth  is  worth  more  than  anything  wrongly  believed  to  be 
the  truth,  and  the  good  sense  to  continue  his  questioning. 
It  should  be  freely  admitted,  however,  that  it  was  with 
a  deep  satisfaction  the  author  found  himself  borne  along 
by  the  force  of  what  seemed  to  him  incontrovertible  facts 


234  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZAEETH 

to  the  conviction  that  Jesus  of  Nazareth  actually  existed, 
that  some  of  the  events  of  his  life  may  be  known  to  us, 
that  some  of  his  words  may  be  recovered,  and  that  his 
personality,  imperfectly  as  we  know  it,  and  widely  as  it 
differed  from  the  estimate  of  the  church,  is  as  sublime 
and  potent  for  good  as  ever. 

When  the  First  Gospel  is  read  in  the  light  of  an  intel- 
ligent criticism,  the  internal  evidence  coincides  with  the 
earliest  external  testimony  that  brings  it  into  connection 
with  an  Aramaic  work  ascribed  to  Matthew.  It  is  mani- 
fest that  the  words  here  recorded  were,  to  a  large  extent 
at  least,  uttered  originally,  not  in  Greek,  not  even  such 
Greek  as  Hellenistic  Jews  spoke,  but  in  Aramaic.  If  none 
of  them  were  spoken  by  Jesus,  or  even  if  the  reputed 
speaker  never  existed,  they  must  have  come  from  the  lips 
of  some  teacher,  or  teachers,  using  the  Aramaic  language. 
Under  no  circumstances,  therefore,  can  these  sayings  be 
the  invention  of  our  Greek  evangelists.  When  they  are 
translated  back  into  the  Galilean  dialect  of  the  Aramaic, 
as  to  some  extent  it  is  possible  to  do,  they  reveal  an  even 
more  remarkable  originality  than  in  the  Greek.  If  al- 
ready the  Greek  text,  or  any  modern  version,  impresses 
the  thoughtful  reader  with  the  extraordinary  power  and 
beauty  of  these  pithy  sayings,  parables  and  addresses, 
the  effect  is  enhanced  when  the  words  are  considered  in 
his  own  vernacular.  But  to  this  general  impression  is 
often  added  the  startling  consciousness  that  behind  some 
familiar  saying  there  lies  a  new  and  strikingly  original 
utterance,  not  dreamed  of  by  the  interpreters  of  the 
Greek  text.  In  some  cases  that  have  already  been  con- 
sidered, in  which  the  term  "son  of  man"  occurred,  the 
new  sayings  are  not  only  original,  and  in  a  high  degree 
suggestive  of  independent  and  radical  thought,  but  also, 
naturally  interpreted,  in  marked  contrast  with  the  order 
of  ideas  likely  to  have  been  entertained  by  the  Aramaic 
speaking  apostolate  or  propagators  of  the  Messianic  sen- 
timent. Some  explanation  of  this  remarkable  phenome- 
non must  be  found,  and  the  most  obvious  is  that  the  new 


THE  GOSPELS  235 


treasures  come  from  the  same  mind  that  gave  to  the 
world  the  parables  whose  beauty  no  version  could  hide. 
These  sayings  possess  evidential  value  just  in  proportion 
as  they  contradict  the  notions  current  in  the  circles 
through  which  they  were  transmitted.  Believers  in  the 
Messiahship  of  Jesus  cannot  have  invented  for  him 
speeches  in  which  extraordinary  powers  are  ascribed  to 
man  in  general,  while  no  prerogatives  are  reserved  for 
the  Messiah.  If  this  process  of  translation  into  the  Ara- 
maic sometimes  reveals  to  us  such  practically  new  sayings, 
too  simple  and  yet  profound  to  be  the  accidental  group- 
ings of  words  in  a  play  of  chance,  and  intelligible  only 
as  the  products  of  a  great  and  independent  mind,  it  often 
shows  the  secondary  character  of  passages  that  bear 
the  marks  of  original  composition  in  Greek,  and  cannot 
readily  be  turned  into  the  Semitic  dialect.  It  should  not 
be  necessary  to  insist  that  the  first  duty  of  the  exegete 
is  to  test  every  reported  utterance  of  Jesus  in  its  probable 
Aramaic  form,  and  that  he  who  is  incompetent  to  do  this 
or  neglects  it  must  leave  to  others  the  most  vital  question 
concerning  the  life  and  teaching  of  Jesus. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  critical  study  of  the  Greek  texts 
is  as  necessary  as  ever,  and  familiarity  with  the  course  of 
criticism  and  insight  into  the  problems  lead  to  the  same 
conclusions.  By  comparison  of  the  different  reports,  the 
relatively  oldest  Greek  form  of  a  saying  may  be  estab- 
lished, and  by  observation  of  the  tendencies  at  work  in 
the  centers  whence  the  gospels  have  come  later  additions 
may  be  eliminated.  Certain  inferences  may  also  be 
drawn  from  the  earlier  operation  of  these  tendencies  as 
to  the  changes  a  saying  may  already  have  undergone  be- 
fore the  first  Greek  gospel  was  written.  By  such  proc- 
esses scholars  have,  without  any  consideration  of  the  orig- 
inal Aramaic,  reached  the  conviction  that  the  earliest 
form  of  many  a  parable,  address  and  apothegm  was  so 
different  from  the  present  form  that  it  can  be  explained 
only  by  the  persistence  of  an  old  tradition  reflecting  the 
immediate  expression  of  an  original  and  fruitful  genius. 


236  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZAEETH 

Divested  of  later  modifications  and  additions,  most  of  the 
parables  are  so  unlike  the  proverbial  sayings  and  similes 
that  might  be  culled  from  Hebrew  literature,  so  mani- 
festly the  products  of  one  mind,  so  inconceivable,  with 
their  constant  emphasis  on  the  kingdom  of  heaven  and 
the  Father  in  heaven,  as  the  instruments  of  a  Messianic 
propaganda  made  by  a  group  of  demagogues  or  teachers 
in  the  interest  of  the  Nazarene,  or  as  a  means  of  rallying 
men  around  the  symbol  of  his  name,  a  nomen  et  praeterea 
nihil,  and  so  impossible  to  understand  as  anything  else 
than  utterances  of  the  man  who  gave  the  first  impulse  to 
the  great  spiritual  movement,  that  they  are  felt  to  be 
themselves  evidences  of  his  historical  existence  as  well  as 
of  his  character  and  thought. 

Many  students  have  been  puzzled  over  the  curious 
avoidance  on  the  part  of  Jesus  of  assuming  any  recog- 
nized Messianic  title,  the  impression  that  he  did  not  accept 
recognition  as  the  Messiah  even  from  his  disciples,  the 
fact  that  he  forbade  his  disciples  to  say  that  he  was  the 
Messiah,  and  his  apparent  reticence  to  the  end  in  regard 
to  his  claims.  The  ordinary  attempts  to  explain  this  pe- 
culiar attitude  are  quite  unsatisfactory.  It  is  supposed 
that  he  disapproved  of  the  current  Messianic  idea,  and  had 
framed  for  himself  a  different  idea  anticipating  the  eccle- 
siastical conception  of  the  Christ,  and  that  he  sought  to 
prepare  his  disciples  for  accepting  him  as  the  Messiah  in 
this  higher  sense.  But  of  such  pedagogical  training  there 
is  no  indication.  He  does  not  seem  to  have  taught  them 
the  distinction  between  the  good  and  powerful  king  of 
Israel  and  conqueror  of  the  world  whom  his  contem- 
poraries regarded  themselves  as  having  a  right  to  look 
for  in  accordance  with  the  prophetic  word  and  the  wholly 
different  kind  of  Messiah  he  considered  himself  to  be. 
He  can  scarcely  have  cherished  the  ambition  or  hope  of 
becoming  the  king  of  Israel  and  of  the  world  in  any  sense 
without  attaching  to  this  office  sufficient  importance  to 
communicate  something  of  its  nature  to  his  closest  dis- 
ciples. Even  students  of  the  Greek  gospels  who  have 


THE  GOSPELS  237 


left  untouched  the  question  as  to  the  meaning  of  the  term 
Son  of  Man  have  been  led  to  see  that  the  problem  arises 
from  the  survival  along  with  the  new  estimate  of  him  as 
the  Messiah,  naturally  modified  by  the  impression  of  his 
personality  and  his  spirit,  of  a  primitive  tradition  that 
Jesus  never  claimed  for  himself  Messiahship  in  any  sense, 
present  or  future,  political  or  metaphysical,  and  prohib- 
ited his  disciples  from  making  such  claims  for  him,  a  tra- 
dition too  old  and  strongly  rooted  to  be  eradicated.1  The 
more  marked  the  contrast  is  between  this  early  tradition 
and  the  apostolic  conception,  the  more  unavoidable  is  the 
conclusion  that  the  former  can  only  be  the  reflection  of 
the  historic  reality.  How  could  those  who  proclaimed 
him  as  the  Messiah  have  invented  the  difficulties  they 
were  at  such  pains  to  circumvent  by  the  assumption  that 
Jesus  carefully  guarded  his  Messianic  secret  until  his 
resurrection  should  reveal  it  ? 

Similar  facts,  only  secondary  to  this  in  importance, 
have  been  observed  by  many  scholars.2  Mark3  has  pre- 
served the  answer  of  Jesus  to  the  young  ruler  addressing 
him  as  Good  Master,  "Why  callest  thou  me  good?  None 
is  good  save  one,  God  only. ' '  This  certainly  does  not  rep- 
resent the  later  feeling  concerning  Jesus.  Mark  also 
records  that  the  relatives  of  Jesus  held  him  to  be  beside 
himself.4  This  is  altogether  probable,  but  it  is  not  likely 
to  have  been  invented  at  a  later  time.  Schmiedel5  has 
added  to  these  passages  the  words  "neither  the  Son"  in 
Mark  xiii,  32,  and  the  cry  on  the  cross,  "My  God,  my  God, 
why  hast  thou  forsaken  me  ? "  in  Matthew  xxvii,  46.  But 
the  first  is  lacking  in  the  original  text  of  Matthew  xxiv, 
36,8  and  likely  to  be  an  interpolation  in  Mark  also.  It 

1  See  especially  Wrede,  Das  Messiasgeheimniss,  1901. 

2  See  especially  Schmiedel,  articles  Gospels  in  Encyclopaedia  Biblica, 
Vol.  II,  1901. 

8  X,  17  ff. 

•in,  21. 

5  I.  c.,  col.  1881. 

"See  the  careful  discussion  by  Merx,  Das  Evangelium  Matfhaeus, 
1902,  p.  356. 


238  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZAEETH 

introduces  a  juxtaposition  of  "the  Father"  and  "the 
Son"  that  is  wholly  foreign  to  the  thought  of  Jesus,  places 
"the  Son"  with  emphasis  above  the  angels,  and  only  pre- 
supposes such  a  doctrine  of  subordination  as  was  widely 
cherished  in  the  Church  throughout  the  second  century 
and  later.  The  second  passage  is  a  quotation  from  a  sup- 
posedly Messianic  Psalm,  deemed  appropriate  by  the 
Early  Church,  to  be  understood  in  the  light  of  Semitic 
thought  and  Biblical  usage,  not  well  authenticated,  since 
there  is  no  disciple  present  to  hear  the  words,  improbable 
as  an  utterance  of  Jesus,  either  as  a  part  of  a  Messianic 
programme  or  as  a  spontaneous  expression  of  a  sense  of 
failure  and  a  lack  of  faith  in  the  midst  of  physical  pain, 
and  explicable  at  any  time  before  the  doctrine  of  the 
incarnation  had  been  fully  developed.1 

More  importance  is  to  be  attached  to  the  remarkable 
fact  that,  while  the  evangelists  certainly,  and  the  Aramaic 
speaking  followers  of  Jesus  probably  at  an  early  time, 
believed  that  he  had  wrought  an  abundance  of  miracles, 
the  gospels  have  nevertheless  preserved  an  old  tradition 
according  to  which  he  positively  refused  to  work  any  sign, 
and  declared  that  no  sign  should  be  given  to  his  genera- 
tion, except  the  sign  of  Jonah,  by  which  he  clearly  meant 
the  preaching  of  repentance.  It  has  also  been  recorded2 
that  he  could  not  do  any  mighty  works  in  Nazareth  be- 
cause of  the  unbelief  of  its  people.  The  fact  was,  of 
course,  the  absence  of  miracles ;  and  the  explanation  is  an 
after-thought.  An  inventor  might  as  well  have  ascribed 
to  him  miracles,  and  saved  the  explanation.  But  there 
was  a  strong  tradition  to  reckon  with.  Occasionally  it 
is  possible  to  observe  by  the  differing  accounts  of  two 
evangelists,  that  while  one  has  preserved  the  old  state- 
ment that  Jesus  ' '  taught  the  multitudes, ' '  another,  1 1  seek- 
ing for  signs,"  has  changed  it  into  a  narrative  of  how 
"he  healed  the  multitudes."  To  some  extent  the  misin- 
terpretation of  Old  Testament  language  may  have  been 

1  See  Brandt,  Die  Evangelische  Geschichte,  1893,  p.  240  ff. 

2  Marie,  vi,  5  ff  j  Matth.,  xiii,  58. 


THE  GOSPELS  239 


responsible  for  such  changes.  In  Matth.  xi,  5,  Jesus 
answers  the  straightforward  question  sent  him  by  John 
the  Baptist,  whether  he  is  the  Messiah  or  they  should  look 
for  another,  by  a  statement  quoted  from  Isaiah  xxxv,  5  ff., 
Ixi,  1,  that  the  blind  see,  the  lame  walk,  the  lepers  are 
cleansed,  the  deaf  hear,  the  dead  are  raised,  and  the  poor 
have  the  gospel  preached  to  them.  It  is  evident  that 
Jesus  had  in  mind  the  obvious  meaning  of  these  words  in 
the  prophetic  book.  They  are  there  figures  of  speech 
referring  to  the  spiritual  apprehension  of  God's  ways  and 
work.  " Report  to  John,"  he  virtually  says,  "that  you 
have  found  the  good  news  of  the  coming  of  the  kingdom 
of  heaven  accepted  by  the  sons  of  men."  That  seemed  to 
him  more  important  than  the  question  as  to  the  Messiah- 
ship.  The  evangelists,  however,  understood  the  saying 
literally,  and  did  their  best  to  find  in  the  life  of  Jesus  such 
works  as  he  had  positively  declared  should  not  be  given 
to  his  contemporaries,  in  order  that  no  detail  of  their  Mes- 
sianic picture  should  be  wanting. 

In  various  ways  the  conviction  thus  forces  itself  upon 
the  historian  that  it  is  possible  to  go  behind  the  records 
and  to  reach  a  trustworthy  tradition,  expressing  itself  first 
orally,  then  in  the  Aramaic  gospel,  which  on  critical  points 
at  least  it  is  possible  to  restore  with  approximate  accu- 
racy, and  finally  in  precious  survivals  preserved,  in  spite  of 
the  different  conceptions  of  the  evangelists,  in  the  Greek 
Gospels  according  to  Matthew,  Mark,  and  Luke,  and,  on 
rare  occasions,  in  the  Gospel  according  to  John,  the  Gospel 
according  to  the  Hebrews  and  elsewhere. 


CHAPTER  X 
THE  LIFE  OF  JESUS 

When  it  is  recognized  that  the  Synoptic  gospels,  in  spite 
of  their  late  date  and  their  didactic,  rather  than  historical, 
character,  contain  survivals  of  an  early  tradition,  all  the 
more  reliable  as  it  contradicts  the  fundamental  positions  of 
these  writings,  a  point  of  departure  has  been  obtained 
whence  it  is  possible  to  proceed  to  a  critical  sifting  of  the 
entire  material.  Transformations  of  original  sayings  and 
more  exact  statements  of  fact  may  be  detected.  Later  ac- 
cretions may  be  eliminated.  The  outlines  of  the  historic 
figure  of  Jesus  become  discernible.  What  is  thus  posi- 
tively gained  may  seem  slight  in  comparison  with  the  wealth 
of  detail  that  once  appeared  to  be  available.  Here  as  else- 
where we  must  be  satisfied  with  knowing  less,  if  we  would 
have  more  accurate  knowledge.  But  a  handful  of  reason- 
ably assured  facts  is  worth  more  from  the  historical  point  of 
view  than  a  vast  mass  of  comparatively  late  traditions.  A 
few  glimpses  of  the  real  life  of  Jesus  may  allow  us  to  per- 
ceive a  career  more  natural,  a  spiritual  attitude  more  com- 
prehensible, a  character  of  greater  dignity  and  intrinsic 
worth,  a  teaching  more  profound  than  the  evangelists,  at 
their  distance  in  time,  with  their  historic  limitations,  and 
under  the  pressure  of  their  peculiar  religious  demands, 
were  capable  of  appreciating. 

There  is  no  valid  reason  to  doubt  that  Jesus  was  born  in 
Galilee,  and  that  he  was  the  son  of  a  carpenter  by  the  name 
of  Joseph  and  his  wife  Mariam,  or  Mary.  The  event  prob- 
ably occurred  a  few  years  before  the  Dionysian  era.  Luke1 

1  The  terms  ' '  Matthew ' '  and  ' '  Luke ' '  have  been  preserved,  though 
in  the  preceding  chapter  it  has  been  shown,  not  only  that  Matthew 
and  Luke  are  not  the  authors  of  the  Greek  gospels  bearing  their 
names,  but  also  that  the  first  two  chapters  in  each  of  these  gospels 
are  later  additions,  themselves  of  highly  composite  origin. 

240 


THE  LIFE  OF  JESUS  241 

indeed  brings  the  birth  of  Jesus  into  connection  with  the 
census  under  Quirinius  that  took  place  in  the  year  6  A.  D.1 
But  he  also  declares  that  the  conception  of  John  happened 
in  the  days  of  Herod,  king  of  Judaea,  and  the  natural  im- 
pression is  that  this  statement  of  time  is  intended  to  cover 
the  angel 's  visit  to  Mary  as  well.  Herod  died  ten  years  be- 
fore the  census  of  Quirinius,  in  4  B.  C.2  As  Matthew  also 
places  the  birth  of  Jesus  before  the  death  of  Herod,  this 
seems  to  be  the  older  tradition.  Luke  clearly  believed  that 
the  census  under  Quirinius  occurred  in  the  days  of  King 
Herod3,  and  saw  in  it  an  occasion  for  the  journey  of  Joseph 
and  his  wife  to  Bethlehem  where  the  Messiah  was  to  be 
born.  This  is  rendered  more  probable  by  the  fact  that  he 
dates  the  public  appearance  of  John  in  the  fifteenth  year  of 
Tiberius,4  28  or  29  A.  D.,  and  regards  Jesus,  who  manifestly 

1 II,  2 ;  Josephus,  Ant.,  xvii,  355 ;  xviii,  1.  f .  Cf .  the  excellent 
discussion  of  this  census  by  Schiirer,  Geschichte  des  judlschen  Volkes, 
3rd  ed.,  1901,  I,  508-543.  The  name  of  the  Eoman  onicial  praised  in 
the  mutilated  inscription  found  near  Tivoli  in  1764  has  unfortunately 
not  been  preserved,  and  it  is  uncertain  whether  he  is  said  to  have 
been  legatus  Augusti  twice,  for  instance  once  in  Cilicia  and  Pam- 
phylia  and  another  time  in  Syria,  or  twice  legate  of  Syria.  The  ref- 
erence in  Tacitus  to  the  victory  of  Quirinius  over  the  Homonadensians 
soon  after  his  consulate  in  12  B.  C.  does  not  prove  that  he  was  gov- 
ernor of  Syria  in  3-2  B.  C.,  as  long  as  it  has  not  been  shown  that 
Cilicia  belonged  to  Syria,  and  was  not  an  imperial  province,  in  the 
time  of  Augustus.  Cf.  Eudolph  Hilgenfeld  in  Zeitschrift  fur  Wissen- 
schaftliche  Theologie,  1880,  p.  98  ff.,  and  Adolph  Hilgenfeld,  ibid., 
1892,  p.  196  ff.  Eamsay  has  produced  no  evidence  of  a  census  in 
Judaea  before  6  A.  D.  (Was  Christ  born  in  Bethleheml  1898). 

Tertullian's  statement  (Adv.  Marcion,  IV,  19)  that  there  was  a 
census  in  Judaea  under  Sentius  Saturninus  (9-6  B.C.)  is  without 
support  and  clearly  erroneous.  Before  the  death  of  Herod  (4  B.  C.) 
there  can  have  beet  310  Eoman  census  in  Judaea,  and  citizens  of 
Galilee  can  have  had  nothing  to  do  with  any  Judaean  census. 

2  Cf .  the  discussion  of  this  date  by  C.  H.  Turner  in  Hastings '  Dic- 
tionary of  the  Bible,  II,  483  ff. 

8 1,  5. 

4  III,  1.     Before  the  time  of  Nerva  civil  years  were  reckoned  in 

Eome  by  the  consuls.     In  the  exceptional  cases  when  regnal  years 

were  used,  they  were  counted  from  the  actual  day  of  accession.     The 

year  extending  from  the  19th  August,  28,  to  the  18th  August,  29,  was 

16 


242  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZAEETH 

appeared  soon  after,  as  "about  thirty  years  of  age." 
While  the  statement  is  not  as  exact  as  it  could  be  desired,1 
it  unquestionably  points  to  the  earlier  period.  The  story  of 
the  Magi  and  the  massacre  of  infants  in  Matthew  presup- 
poses a  tradition  placing  Jesus '  birth  in  the  time  of  Herod. 
In  John  ii,  20  the  temple  is  said  to  have  been  in  building 
forty-six  years.  Herod  began  the  main  structure  in  20  B. 
C.  Archaelaus  may  have  added  a  wing;  there  is  no  evi- 
dence or  likelihood  that  the  Roman  procurators  did  anything 
to  the  temple.  From  41  A.  D.  Agrippa  I  built  on  the  sanc- 
tuary, and  the  temple  was  finished  under  Agrippa  II  in  65 
A.  D.2  However  the  years  actually  spent  on  this  enterprise 
may  have  been  counted,  no  light  is  thrown  by  the  statement 
upon  the  chronology  of  Jesus '  life.  In  John  viii,  57  the  Jews 
ask,  ' '  Thou  art  not  yet  fifty  years,  and  hast  thou  seen  Abra- 
ham ? "  It  may  perhaps  be  inferred  from  this  that  the  Fourth 
Evangelist  looked  upon  Jesus  as  a  man  of  at  least  forty 
years  when  this  question  was  asked.  Irenaeus3  also  records 
the  opinion  of  some  presbyters  in  Asia  Minor  that  Jesus  at- 
tained an  age  of  between  forty  and  fifty  years.  But  it  is 
doubtful  whether,  in  either  case,  a  genuine  and  old  tradition 
can  be  assumed.  If  the  story  of  the  star  of  Bethlehem  is 
connected  with  the  conjunction  of  Jupiter  and  Saturn  in 
Pisces  or  the  succeeding  still  greater  conjunction  of  these 
planets  in  Aries,  and  if  Jesus  was  actually  conceived  or 

probably  regarded  as  the  fifteenth  of  Tiberius  Js  reign.  But  if  the 
author  was  influenced  by  the  custom  prevailing  in  the  time  of  Trajan, 
he  may  have  considered  the  time  from  the  19th  August  to  the  31st 
December,  14,  as  the  first,  and  the  tribunician  year  28  as  the  fifteenth. 
The  consuls  of  the  year  29  were  Eubellius  Geminus  and  Eufus  Gemi- 
nus. 

1  Annas  (6-15  A.  D.)  is  wrongly  made  high-priest  at  the  same  time 
as  Caiaphas  (18-36  A.  D.);  Antipas  is  called  only  Herod;  Philip  is, 
contrary  to  Josephus,  made  Tetrarch  of  Iturea;  Lysanias,  who  died 
36  B.  C.,  is  made  tetrarch  at  this  time.     ' '  About  thirty  years ' '  is 
quite  indefinite.     Even  the  fifteenth  year  of  Tiberius  may  be  Luke's 
impression  merely  of  the  account  given  by  Josephus  of  Pilate's  pro- 
curatorship.     Cf .  Keim,  Geschichte  Jesu,  III,  p.  480, 

2  Cf .  Keim,  I.  c.,  I,  615  f . 
3 II,  22,  5, 


THE  LIFE  OF  JESUS  243 

born  at  the  time  when  one  or  the  other  of  these  conjunc- 
tions occupied  the  attention  of  astrologers,  his  birth  would 
have  occurred  between  the  spring  of  7  B.  C.  and  the  end  of 
5  B.  C.  There  can  be  no  question  about  the  astrological  im- 
portance especially  of  the  conjunctio  maxima  in  6  B.  C. ;  but 
it  may  be  seriously  questioned  whether  the  conception  and 
birth  of  Jesus  synchronized  with  the  significant  movements 
of  the  two  planets.  Nevertheless,  it  is  not  improbable  that 
Jesus  was  born  toward  the  end  of  the  reign  of  Herod.  The 
day  of  his  birth  is  as  little  known  as  the  year.  The  early 
church  celebrated  as  his  birth-day  the  festival  of  the 
epiphany  of  Dionysus  on  the  sixth  of  January,  and  the  Ar- 
menian church  still  continues  this  custom;  the  Roman 
church  since  the  fourth  century  celebrates  the  natalis  solis 
invicti  on  the  twenty-fifth  of  December. 

That  the  parents  of  Jesus  lived  in  Nazareth,  and  that  he 
was  universally  regarded  as  a  native  of  that  place,  is  the  im- 
pression left  by  the  gospels.  It  is  uncertain,  however, 
whether  the  Nazareth  mentioned  is  identical  with  the  pres- 
ent En  Nazura.  No  town  by  this  name  occurs  in  the  Old 
Testament,  the  works  of  Josephus,  or  the  Talmud.  Cheyne1 
questions  its  very  existence  in  the  first  century,  and  explains 
Nazareth  as  Galilee,  Nazarene  in  Matth.  ii,  23  as  Galilean, 
referring  to  Isaiah  ix,  1  ff.,  the  Talmudic  Jeshu  ha  nozeri2 
as  Jesus  the  Galilean,  and,  following  Halevy  and  Well- 
hausen,3  Gennesareth  as  Galilee.  The  most  important  of 
these  positions  would  be  tenable  even  if  it  should  be  possible 
to  prove  that  there  was  a  Galilean  town  of  Nazareth.  Hal- 
evy4 looks  for  such  a  place  near  the  Lake  of  Galilee.  Of 
this,  however,  there  is  no  evidence,  and  the  modern  Nazareth 
is  most  probably  the  place  where  Jesus  was  born.  The 
story  of  the  Magi5  reveals  the  source  of  the  idea  that 
Jesus  was  born  in  Bethlehem.  This  story  rests  upon 

1  Encyclopaedia  Biblica,  III,  3360  ff. 

2  AbodaZara,  17a. 

3  Israelische  und  judische  Geschichte,  3rd  ed.7  1897,  p.  266, 

4  Revue  Semitique,  1903,  p.  232  ff , 

5  Matth.,  ii,  1  ff , 


244  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZAEETH 

the  assumption  current  in  antiquity  that  the  fate  of  men 
and  nations  may  be  read  in  the  stars.  While  the  writer 
himself  may  have  conceived  of  the  star  that  went  before 
the  Magi  "until  it  came  and  stood  over  where  the  young 
child  was"  as  a  new  and  startling  celestial  phenomenon, 
the  tradition  upon  which  he  drew  no  doubt  had  its 
origin  in  the  astrologically  important  observation  that  about 
the  time  when  Jesus  must  have  been  born  there  occurred  the 
greatest  of  all  conjunctions,  that  of  Jupiter  and  Saturn  in 
the  Zodiacal  sign  of  Aries,  the  house  of  the  sun  at  the  vernal 
equinox.  According  to  Kepler,1  there  was  a  conjunction 
of  Jupiter  and  Saturn  in  Pisces  about  the  22d  of  June,  7 
B.  C.  and  in  February-May,  6  B.  C.,  a  still  greater  con- 
junction when  Mars  approached  Jupiter  and  Saturn  and,  in 
addition  to  them,  the  sun  with  its  satellites  Venus  and  Mer- 
cury also  appeared  in  or  near  Aries.  He  was  quite  justified 
in  asking,  *  '  What  could  the  Chaldaeans,  following  the  still 
extant  rules  of  their  art,  conjecture  but  an  event  of  the  very 
greatest  importance?"  The  language  of  Matthew  forced 
Kepler  to  assume  that  "together  with  and  besides  such  very 
great  conjunctions"  a  comet  appeared.2  Oefele  has  recently 
called  attention  to  a  demotic  papyrus  in  the  Berlin  Museum 
giving  the  positions  of  the  planets  from  17  B.  C.  to  10  A.  D.8 
This  table  indicates  a  conjunction  of  Jupiter  and  Saturn  in 
Aries  from  the  12th  Epiphi  23  of  Augustus's  reign  to  the 
8th  Thot,  24,  from  the  5th  Mechir  to  the  5th  Epiphi,  24,  and 
from  the  1st  Choiak  to  the  3d  Mechir,  25.  With  the  aid  of 
such  data  and  due  observation  of  the  apparent  retrogres- 
sions of  the  planets,  Oefele  has  figured  out  that  the  con- 

1  Opera  Omnia,  ed.  Frisch,  II,  708  f.;  IV,  257,  347. 

2  Opera  Omnia,  IV,  257.    Kepler  does  not  seem  to  have  given  the 
technical  sense  of  a  conjunction  of  Jupiter  and  Saturn  in  Aries  to  the 
term  conjunctio  maxima,  but  simply  '  '  a  very  great  conjunction.  '  '    He 
appears  to  think  of  the  conjunction  in  Pisces  as  well  as  that  in  Aries 
and  the  concourse  of  other  planets  beside  the  largest  ones  in  the  same 
region  of  the  sky,  when  lie  speaks  of  *  '  solchen  conjunctionibus  max- 


*Die  Angaben  der  Berliner  Planetentafel  P.  8279,  and  Das  Horo- 
skop  der  Empfangnis  Christi  in  Hitteilungen  der  VorderasatiscJien 
Gesellschaft,  1903,  2  and  6. 


THE  LIFE  OF  JESUS  245 

junction  in  Pisces  referred  to  by  Kepler  ended  seven  days 
before  the  first  conjunction  in  Aries,  that  there  were  three 
periods  of  conjunction  in  Aries  interrupted  by  one  in  Pisces, 
that  one  of  these  periods  began  the  15th  April,  6  B.  C,  that 
Jupiter  became  stationary,  or  ' '  stood, ' '  in  Aries  on  the  27th 
December,  6  B.  C.,  and  that  Jesus  was  conceived  on  the  15th 
April  of  that  year  and  found  in  Bethlehem  on  the  27th  De- 
cember by  the  Magi  who  had  started  from  Jerusalem  on  the 
25th  November.  Oefele  shows  by  the  testimony  of  cunei- 
form tablets  that  Babylonian  astrologers  were  in  the  habit 
of  predicting  the  effect  of  planetary  positions  upon  Martu, 
or  Syria.  The  value  of  his  researches  lies  in  pointing  out 
how  necessarily  this  conjunction,  occurring  only  a  few 
times  in  a  millennium,  must  have  led  observers  of  the  stars 
to  look  for  extraordinary  events  and  to  find  horoscopes  im- 
plying unusual  destines.  There  can  be  little  doubt  that  as- 
trology helped  to  create  an  atmosphere  of  expectancy  at  this 
time.  But  it  should  also  be  considered  how  natural  it 
would  be  to  conclude  subsequently  from  the  importance  of 
a  historic  personality  that  his  conception  or  birth  must  have 
been  connected  with  the  peculiar  and  rarely  occurring  posi- 
tion of  the  planets.1  There  are  minor  difficulties,  such  as 
the  too  short  period  between  conception  and  birth,  the  too 
long  journey  from  Jerusalem  to  Bethlehem,  and  the  compu- 
tation of  the  regnal  years  of  Augustus.  But  these  are  of 
little  consequence  compared  with  the  tremendous  strain 
upon  modern  intelligence  of  the  assumption  that  there 
really  is  a  relation  between  the  conception  of  a  human 
being  upon  the  earth  and  the  greater  or  shorter  distance  be- 
tween some  of  the  planets  in  the  sky. 

In  all  probability,  a  Hellenistic  Jew  or  a  Gentile  con- 
verted to  Christianity  toward  the  end  of  the  first  century 
was  led  by  his  knowledge  of  the  conjunctio  maxima  in  6 
B.  C.  to  suppose  that  Jesus  was  born  under  those  auspicious 
planetary  influences,  and  to  conclude  that  astrologers  in 
the  East  must  have  seen  his  star  (Jupiter  near  Saturn  in 
Aries)  and  naturally  come  to  worship  him.  That  Magi 

1  This  was  clearly  done  in  the  case  of  Alexander. 


246  THE  PROPHET  OF  NAZARETH 

from  the  rising  sun  might  thus  have  journeyed  far  to  pay 
divine  homage  to  a  great  king,  had  been  seen  in  the  case  of 
Tiridates  and  the  Magi  in  his  company,  who  in  66  A.  D.  had 
gone  through  Asia  Minor  to  Rome  to  prostrate  themselves 
before  Nero,  addressing  him  as  a  god.1  An  influence  upon 
the  legend  from  this  source  was  suggested  by  Dieterich2  and 
has  been  deemed  probable  by  Usener3  and  Pfleiderer.4 
Thus  understood,  it  sets  forth  in  impressive  symbolism  the 
conversion  of  the  Mithras- worshiping  world  to  Christianity, 
the  adoration  of  the  new-born  king  of  the  Jews  by  the  Magi, 
in  contrast  with  the  attitude  of  his  own  people  who,  though 
in  possession  of  the  prophetic  word,  refused  to  do  him  honor. 
The  story  clearly  indicates  that  it  was  the  prophecy  of 
Micah5  which  rendered  it  necessary  to  believe  that  as  the 
Messiah  he  must  have  been  born  in  Bethlehem.  The  Beth- 
lehem meant  is  unquestionably  the  well  known  town  in 
Judah  where  David  was  supposed  to  have  been  born. 
Cheyne6  thinks  of  Bethlehem  nozeriyya,  or  zeriyya,  in 
Zebulon,  7  miles  N.  W.  of  Nazareth,  a  place  mentioned  in 
the  Talmud.7  But  it  is  to  be  observed  that  this  Bethlehem  is 
only  referred  to  in  the  birth-stories  and  is  distinctly  con- 
nected with  David.  At  least  since  the  eighth  century  Beth- 
lehem in  Judah  was  regarded  as  the  birth-place  of  David. 
Only  in  recent  times  the  accuracy  of  this  tradition  has  been 
questioned.8  Modern  criticism  is  making  Bethlehem  again 
' '  little  among  the  thousands  of  Judah, ' '  no  longer  to  be  hon- 

*b  Dio  Cassius,  LXIII,  2  f . 

*  Zeitschrift  fur  die  neutestamentliche  Wissenschaft,  1902,  p.  1  ff . 
9  Ibid.,  1903,  p.  19. 

4  Das  Christusbild  des  urchristlichen  Glaubens,  1903,  p.  101.  How 
far  the  star  of  Jacob  in  Numbers,  xxiv,  17,  influenced  the  legend,  is 
difficult  to  say.  Pfleiderer  has  also  suggested  Isaiah,  Ix,  1  ff .,  where 
the  breaking  forth  of  Yahwe's  light  is  followed  by  the  coming  of 
the  Sabaeans  with  gifts  of  gold  and  frankincense  (Das  Urchristen- 
tum,  2nd  ed.,  1902,  p.  552  f.). 

'Matth.,  ii,  6;  Micah,  v,  1. 

•  Encyclopaedia  Biblica,  III,  3360  ff. 
'Megilla,  70a. 

8  Marquart,  Fundamente  israelitischer  und  jiidischer  Geschichte, 
1896,  p.  23  ff. 


THE  LIFE  OF  JESUS  247 

ored  as  the  birth-place  either  of  David  or  of  Jesus.  The 
massacre  of  the  infants  is  inextricably  interwoven  with  the 
visit  of  the  astrologers  from  the  East.  Josephus  records 
many  a  crime  committed  by  Herod,  but  he  knew  nothing  of 
such  a  deed.  This  silence  remains  strange,  even  when  due 
weight  is  given  to  the  reasoning  of  J.  C.  Vollborth1  who 
called  attention  to  the  fact  that  Bethlehem  cannot  have  had 
more  than  about  a  thousand  inhabitants,  so  that  the  number 
of  male  children  under  two  years  of  age  is  not  likely  to  have 
exceeded  a  dozen.  Far  reaching  conclusions  have  been 
drawn  from  Matthew's  account  of  the  flight  to  Egypt. 
Rabbis  reported  in  the  Talmud  supposed  that  Jesus  learned 
in  Egypt  forbidden  magic,2  and  modern  writers  have 
thought  that  he  acquired  the  wisdom  of  the  Egyptians. 
The  evangelist  clearly  indicates  the  source  of  this  story. 
The  flight  was  invented  "that  it  might  be  fulfilled  which 
was  spoken  by  the  Lord  through  the  prophet,  saying,  *  *  Out 
of  Egypt  I  have  called  my  son."3  It  is  unknown  to  Luke. 
Instead  of  a  visit  by  Magi,  this  evangelist  narrates  the  com- 
ing of  shepherds  to  Bethlehem,  who  have  been  informed  by 
angels  that  "a  Saviour,  who  is  Christ,  the  Lord,  has  been 
born  in  the  city  of  David."4  And  from  Bethlehem  he  lets 
the  holy  family  go,  not  to  Egypt,  but  to  Jerusalem  and 
thence  "to  their  own  city  Nazareth."5 

At  the  root  of  the  various  Bethlehem  legends  lies  the  con- 
viction that  Jesus  must  have  been  a  true  descendant  of 
David.  The  genealogies  in  Matthew6  and  Luke7  bear  wit- 
ness to  this  conviction.  Both  profess  to  give  the  pedigree 
of  Joseph.  One  goes  back  to  Abraham,  the  other  to  Adam ; 
one  runs  through  the  royal  line,  the  other  follows  a  side 

'In  Matth.,  ii,  16,  1788,  summarized  by  Eichhorn  in  Allgemeine 
VibliotheJc,  1789,  p.  356  ff. 

aCf.  e.  g.  Shabbath,  104b;  Sanhedrin,  107b;  Sota,  47a;  pal.  Shab- 
bath,  14.  So  also  the  Jewish  informants  of  Celsus. 

*  Matth.,  ii,  14;  Hosea,  xi,  1. 

4  Luke,  ii,  8  ff . 

6  Luke,  ii,  39. 
•I,  1-17. 

7  III,  23-38. 


248  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZARETH 

branch ;  one  omits  certain  links  to  make  the  chain  consist  of 
three  equal  parts,  the  other  adds  links  not  found  in  the  Old 
Testament.  Both  depend  on  the  Greek  version  for  the 
earlier  period,  and  apparently  upon  some  books  akin  to  the 
Chronicles  for  some  of  the  later  names.  Curiously  enough, 
Shealtiel  is  the  son  of  Jeconiah  in  Matthew,  the  son  of  Neri 
in  Luke;  Joseph  descends  from  David's  son  Solomon  and 
Zerubbabel's  son  Abiud  in  Matthew,  from  David's  son 
Nathan  and  Zerubbabel's  son  Khesa  in  Luke,  and  neither 
Abiud  nor  Khesa  are  mentioned  among  the  sons  of  Zerub- 
babel  in  Chronicles;  in  fact,  Joseph's  own  father  is  Jacob  in 
Matthew  and  Heli  in  Luke.  The  phrases  "of  Tamar"  in 
vs  3,  "of  Rahab"  and  "of  Ruth"  in  vs  5,  and  "of  her  that 
had  been  the  wife  of  Uriah"  in  vs  6,  are  probably  late  addi- 
tions by  some  one  who  desired  to  emphasize  the  contrast  be- 
tween the  Davidic  lineage  of  Jesus'  putative  father,  with 
its  undeniable  taints,  and  the  pure  and  spotless  paternity 
of  Jesus.  The  incomplete,  contradictory  and  mutually  ex- 
clusive genealogies  only  show  that  Jesus'  grandfather  was 
not  known  in  early  Christian  circles.  But  while  they  do  not 
prove  the  Davidic  descent  of  Jesus,  they  are  of  great  value 
in  revealing  the  earliest  tradition  as  to  his  immediate  pater- 
nity. It  was  recognized  long  ago  that  no  man  could  have 
undertaken  to  prove  by  the  pedigree  of  Joseph  the  Davidic 
descent  of  Jesus  who  did  not  believe  that  Jesus  was  the  son 
of  Joseph.  But  this  remained  a  critical  conjecture  until  the 
discovery  of  the  Sinaitic  Syriac  palimpsest.  This  version, 
made  from  a  Greek  text  older  than  any  we  possess  to-day, 
as  is  universally  admitted,  reads  in  Matth.  i,  16,  "Joseph 
begat  Jesus."  Some  manuscripts  of  the  old  Latin  version 
point  to  the  same  text.1 

This  is  indeed  out  of  harmony  with  the  story  of  the  virgin 
birth,  as  the  contradiction  to  it  given  in  verse  18  at  once 
evinces,  but  the  section  containing  it  is  clearly  a  later  inser- 
tion. The  profound  influence  of  non-Jewish  thought  upon 

1The  fullest  discussion  of  the  passage  will  be  found  in  Adalbert 
Merx,  Das  Evangelium  Matthaeus  nach  der  Syrischen  im  Sinaikloster 
gefundenen  Palimpsesihandschrift,  1902,  p.  5  ff. 


THE  LIFE  OF  JESUS  249 

the  author  of  Matth.  i,  18-ii,  23  cannot  be  denied.  In  the 
Graeco-Roman  world  the  idea  of  a  divine  paternity  was  ex- 
ceedingly common.  Pythagoras  was  supposed  to  be  a  son 
of  Apollo  and  Parthenis,  Plato  a  son  of  Apollo  and  Perik- 
tione,  Alexander  a  son  of  Amon  Re  or  Zeus  and  Olympias, 
Seleucus  a  son  of  Apollo  and  Laodice,  Augustus  a  son  of 
Jupiter  and  Attia,  Apollonius  of  Tyana  a  son  of  Zeus  and 
a  woman,  and  Simon  Magus  a  son  of  the  Most  High  and  a 
virgin,  to  mention  only  a  few  examples  among  many.1  In 
early  Israel  similar  notions  occur,  as  Gen.  vi,  1  ff.  and  other 
passages  show.  But  in  later  Judaism  they  seem  to  have  dis- 
appeared except  where  cr  irptb.  Greek  thought  is  mani- 
fest, as  in  the  case  of  1-m,'  .According  to  him,  Samuel 
was  "born  of  a  human  mocher"  who  "became  pregnant 
after  receiving  divine  seed;"2  Zipporah  was  found  by 
Moses  "pregnant  by  no  mortal;"3  Tamar  was  "pregnant 
through  divine  seed;"4  and  Isaac  was  "not  the  result  of 
generation  but  the  shaping  of  the  unbegotten.  "5  This 
shows  that  even  profound  thinkers  among  the  Hellenistic 
Jews  occupied  themselves  with  parthenogenetic  speculations. 
Whether  the  wrong  translation  of  'almah  in  Isaiah  vii,  14 
as  "virgin"  instead  of  as  "young  woman"  contributed  to 
the  development  of  the  doctrine  of  the  virgin  birth  or  was  a 
welcome  proof  from  the  Scriptures  of  an  already  formed 
conviction,  cannot  be  determined.  But  the  author  of  the 
story  may  very  well  have  been  a  Christian  Jew.  His  fa- 
miliarity with  the  Jewish  law  of  betrothal  speaks  in  favor  of 
this  view. 

Originally,  the  account  in  Luke  presented  Mary  as  the 
wife  of  Joseph,  accompanying  her  husband  to  Bethlehem, 
there  giving  birth  to  her  first-born  son  with  him,  and  stop- 
ping on  the  way  home  in  Jerusalem  after  they  had  both  been 

1  Cf .  Usener,  Religionsgeschichtliche  UntersucJiungen,  1898,  p.  70  ff. 
2 1,  273,  ed.  Mangey. 
"I,  147. 
4 1,  598. 
5I    215. 


250  THE  PBOPHET  OF  NAZAEETH 

purified.  Hillman1  has  convincingly  shown  that  when  the 
interpolated  verses  i,  34,  35  and  the  gloss  "as  was  sup- 
posed" in  iii,  23  have  been  removed,  there  is  not  the  slight- 
est intimation  of  a  virgin  birth  in  the  text,  but  weighty  evi- 
dence that  the  author  can  have  had  no  such  miracle  in 
mind.2  This  disposes  of  the  various  attempts  by  Jewish 
rabbis  and  modern  scholars  to  discover  the  real  paternity 
of  Jesus,  as  well  as  of  the  fiction  of  an  immaculate  concep- 
tion. The  currents  of  human  life  that  united  in  the  person- 
ality of  Jesus  bore  through  hidden  channels  from  sources 
lost  to  view  the  strength  and  weakness  of  the  race.  To 
regard  them  as  common  ?-  'int">lean  was  a  serious  de- 
parture from  the  spirit  of  -  ^th"  at  avenged  itself  by  cast- 
ing the  shadow  of  a  wholly  ^Tdeserved  suspicion  on  the 
humble  family  of  Nazareth.3 

1Jahrbiicher  fur  protestantische  Theologie,  XVII,  1891,  192  ff. 

*Lu1ce,  i,  5-25,  41b,  46-55,  57-80,  seems  to  have  been  drawn  from  a 
work  originating  among  the  disciples  of  John  the  Baptist.  The  Mag- 
nificat was  originally  put  upon  the  lips  of  Elizabeth,  as  Volter  has 
shown.  (Theologisch  Tijdschrift,  1896,  p.  244  ff.).  Harnack  has 
called  attention  to  the  fact  that  both  " Elizabeth "  and  "Mary"  in 
vs.  46  are  late  (Sitzungsberichte  der  Berliner  Alcademie  der  Wissen- 
schaften,  1900,  p.  538  ff.),  which  would  give  the  psalm  to  Elizabeth. 
The  psalm  is  an  imitation  of  that  ascribed  to  Hanna,  but  signifi- 
cantly omits  the  supposed  Messianic  reference,  and  speaks  of  a  "  hu- 
miliation "  of  the  Lord's  handmaiden,  appropriate  in  the  case  of 
Elizabeth,  but  not  applicable  to  Mary.  The  legends  concerning 
Hanna  and  Symeon  are  clearly  of  late  origin. 

8  The  story  that  Jesus  was  the  son  of  a  soldier  by  the  name  of 
Panthera  was  known  already  to  Celsus  in  178  A.  D.  (Origen,  Contra 
Celsum,  I,  32),  and  is  frequently  repeated  in  the  Babylonian  and 
Palestinian  Talmuds.  (See  the  original  texts  in  Dalman,  Was  sagt 
der  Talmud  uber  Jesum,  1891).  Panthera  is  probably  a  Greek  ana- 
gram on  the  word  Parthenos- Virgin,  Bar  Panthera  thus  playfully 
hinting  at  the  "Son  of  the  Virgin."  Later  Panthera  was  made  the 
name  of  the  alleged  seducer  of  Mary.  This  anagram  was  suggested 
by  P.  Cassel  in  1878  in  his  Commentary  on  Esther  (Eng.  tr.,  p.  336), 
and  by  J.  Eendel  Harris,  The  Apology  of  Aristides  in  Texts  and 
Studies,  Cambridge,  1893,  p.  25.  The  name  Panther  also  occurs  in 
Christian  genealogies  of  Jesus;  cf.  Epiphanius,  Eaer.,  Ixxviii,  7,  but 
this  probably  is  an  attempted  rehabilitation  of  Panthera.  Ben-Sotada 
is  generally  explained  "Son  of  this  woman  suspected  of  adultery/1 


THE  LIFE  OF  JESUS  251 

Concerning  the  early  life  of  Jesus  little  is  known.  He 
may  have  been  about  twelve  years  of  age  when,  in  6  A.  D., 
the  census  of  Quirinius  caused  an  insurrection  headed  by 
the  Galilean,  Judas  of  Gamala  in  Gaulanitis,  and  it  is  not 
improbable  that  his  youthful  mind  was  already  impressed 
with  the  weighty  issues  that  were  involved.  About  the 
same  time  he  may  have  made  his  first  pilgrimage  to  Jeru- 
salem and  seen  for  the  first  time  animal  sacrifices  offered  to 
Tahwe.  If  he  asked  any  questions  of  the  priests  or  the 
elders  in  the  temple,  they  are  likely  to  have  concerned  the 
sacrificial  cult.1  The  child  is  the  father  of  the  man.  From 
Mark  vi,  3  ff .  it  is  safe  to  conclude  that  Jesus  was  a  carpen- 
ter and  house-builder.  This  passage  also  shows  that  the 

though  this  explanation  is  open  to  doubt.  In  modern  times  many- 
writers  have  sought  to  account  for  the  general  characteristics  of  Jesus 
and  his  peculiar  attitude  to  priests,  scribes  and  Pharisees  as  well  as 
to  his  mother  and  brothers  by  his  supposed  illegitimate  birth.  But 
the  suspicion  of  illegitimacy  is  only  a  corollary  of  the  late  doctrine  of 
a  virgin  birth.  It  is  time  that  historic  criticism  should  put  an  end  to 
these  groundless  aspersions  against  the  parents  of  Jesus  with  the 
survivals  of  pagan  mythology  that  gave  occasion  to  them.  The  car- 
penter of  Nazareth  and  his  good  wife  need  no  apology  for  giving  to 
the  world,  as  the  fruits  of  tender  and  loyal  affection,  their  first  born 
son  and  his  less  distinguished  brothers  and  sisters.  But  the  Church 
in  its  maturity  should  seek  to  repair  the  injury  done  unwittingly  by 
the  Church  in  its  childhood  to  this  worthy  couple,  and  to  all  sound 
family  life,  by  the  myths  concerning  the  origin  of  Jesus. 

*The  nucleus  of  the  story,  Luke,  ii,  41-51,  belongs  to  the  older 
stratum  of  tradition,  as  is  clear  from  the  modest  role  of  Jesus,  listen- 
ing to  the  teachers  and  asking  them  questions,  and  from  Mary's 
words,  "Thy  father  and  I  were  seeking  thee."  But  the  answer  of 
Jesus,  "How  is  it  that  ye  sought  me?  Wist  ye  not  that  I  must  be 
about  my  Father's  business?"  is  as  clearly  secondary.  In  his  anxiety 
to  mark  the  contrast  between  "thy  father"  and  "my  Father,"  the 
author  has  put  upon  the  lips  of  Jesus  a  wholly  unwarranted  rebuke  of 
his  parents.  Why  should  they  not  seek  him?  Whether  we  interpret 
"my  Father's  business"  or  "my  Father's  house,"  there  is  no  ques- 
tion here  of  a  conflict  of  duties  to  God  and  to  parents,  but  rather  a 
suggestion  of  that  tendency  to  set  aside  manifest  moral  duties  on  a 
religious  pretext,  which  Jesus  himself  so  severely  criticised  in  later 
life. 


252  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZARETH 

trade  cannot  have  been  merely  a  rabbi's  avocation.1  The 
astonishment  of  his  neighbors  is  too  genuine,  and  their 
knowledge  concerning  his  outward  career  too  reliable,  to 
permit  the  idea  that  Jesus  had  been  trained  as  a  rabbi.  The 
whole  character  of  his  teaching  precludes  the  assumption. 
There  is  nothing  to  suggest  that  he  had  ever  appeared  as  a 
teacher  before  his  contact  with  John  the  Baptist.  But 
there  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  many  years  during  which  he 
quietly  worked  at  his  trade  witnessed  the  growth  of  his 
moral  and  religious  character  and  the  development  of  his 
peculiar  views  of  life.  What  the  shaping  influences  were, 
cannot  be  determined  with  certainty.  His  later  conduct 
and  teaching  suggest,  however,  that  he  learned  more  from 
observation  of  nature,  intercourse  with  men,  and  com- 
munion with  God,  than  from  books.  In  the  synagogue  of 
Nazareth,  Moses  and  the  Prophets  were  read  in  the  Hebrew, 
and  probably  a  methurgeman  interpreted  in  the  Galilean 
dialect  of  the  Aramaic  the  sections  read.  The  prophetic 
books  seem  to  have  left  a  deeper  impression  on  Jesus  than 
the  Law.  If  his  home  possessed  any  of  these  revered  writ- 
ings, it  is  likely  that  prophets  and  psalms  were  his  favorite 
reading.2  From  the  great  prophets  of  his  people  he  learned 
how  freely  men  of  the  spirit  had  criticised  what  he  supposed 

1  So  apparently  Brandt,  who  thinks  that  Jesus  went  through  the 
school  af  Pharisaic  Biblical  erudition  and  thus  became  a  rabbi,  and 
who  attaches  much  value  to  a  Eabbinic  decision  handed  down  from 
Jesus  the  Galilean  through  an  unknown  disciple,  Jacob  of  Kefar 
Sekanyah,   to   Eabbi  Eliezer   and   quoted  in  Aboda  Zara,  16b,   17a 
(Evangelische  Geschichte,  1893,  p.  449  ff.). 

2  There  is  no  reason  to  doubt  that  he  knew  how  to  read  and  to 
write.    An   opportunity   to    acquire   such   knowledge   was   probably 
offered  in  the  synagogue.     Josephus  seems  to  indicate  that  (Contra 
Apionem,  II,  204),  and  the  Mishna  clearly  shows  it  to  have  been  the 
case  in  the  second  century  A.  D.     (Shabbath,  I,  3.)     While  all  par- 
ents may  not  have  given  their  children  the  advantage  of  such  instruc- 
tion, and  it  is  difficult  to  determine  how  far  the  conditions  of  Judaea 
prevailed  also  in  a  small  Galilean  town  in  the  first  years  of  our  era, 
it  is  safe  to  assume  that  a  promising  child  was  given  the  oppor- 
tunity, or  an  intelligent  young  man  was  able  to  secure  for  himself  a 
chance,  of  acquiring  these  elements  of  education. 


THE  LIFE  OF  JESUS 


to  be  Mosaic  institutions,  how  strongly  they  had  emphasized 
their  conviction  that  God  desired  righteousness  and  not  sac- 
rifices, how  strenuously  they  had  opposed  the  resort  to 
chariots  and  horses  and  urged  a  quiet  reliance  on  the  arm 
of  God,  and  how  constantly  they  had  peered  into  the  future 
for  the  signs  of  the  great  day  of  the  Lord.  Their  influence 
upon  him  is  unmistakable.  On  the  other  hand,  his  sayings 
do  not  reveal  to  what  extent  he  was  familiar  with  such  wis- 
dom-books as  Job,  Ecclesiasticus,  Proverbs  and  Ecclesiastes, 
or  whether  he  was  at  all  acquainted  with  such  works  as  the 
Psalms  of  Solomon,  the  earlier  parts  of  Enoch,  and  Jubilees. 
Both  his  daily  occupation  and  his  bent  of  mind  tended  to 
give  him  a  livelier  interest  in  the  vital  issues  presented  by 
the  prophets  than  in  the  legal  questions  absorbing  the  atten- 
tion of  the  rabbis,  and  to  send  him  in  leisure  moments  to  the 
fountain-heads  of  inspiration  and  instruction  rather  than  to 
the  best  cisterns.  He  was  a  sympathetic  and  thoughtful  ob- 
server of  nature.  Revelations  of  deep  significance  came  to 
him  through  rain  and  sunshine,  land  and  sea,  trees  and 
flowers,  birds  and  beasts.  References  to  natural  objects 
and  phenomena  are  as  frequent  in  his  reported  utterances 
as  they  are  conspicuously  absent  in  the  rabbinic  discussions 
of  the  Talmud,  or  the  epistolary  literature  of  the  New  Testa- 
ment. His  observation  of  human  nature  was  keen  rather 
than  broad.  He  learned  much  from  contact  with  men,  even 
though  his  acquaintance  was  limited  by  the  circumstances  of 
his  life.  His  disregard  of  conventional  standards  of  judg- 
ment led  him  to  put  his  own  valuation  upon  the  characters 
of  men,  their  words  and  deeds.  His  half  wondering,  half 
reproachful  question,  "  Judge  ye  not  of  yourselves  what  is 
right  ? ' '  reveals  a  fundamental  principle  of  his  mental  proc- 
esses. He  seems  to  have  judged  men  by  the  manner  in 
which  they  affected  him  more  than  by  an  impartial  scrutiny 
of  their  actions,  a  nice  balancing  of  merits  and  demerits, 
and  a  gradual  approach  to  an  adequate  estimate  by  observa- 
tion from  many  view-points.  In  this  he  was  a  son  of  the 
prophets,  and  of  his  race.  The  men  with  whom  he  came  in 
contact  were  Hebrews,  not  Greeks.  If  in  the  fragmentary 


254  THE  PKOPHET  OF  NAZAEETH 

record  he  seems  to  hurl  his  woes  indiscriminately  against 
whole  classes,  not  only  holding  those  responsible  for  enter- 
ing in  who  had  the  keys,  or  demanding  much  of  those  to 
whom  much  had  been  given,  but  apparently  failing  to  recog- 
nize the  sincerity  of  those  whose  conservatism  kept  them  in 
the  beaten  paths  and  condemning  as  hypocrites  and  thieves 
the  entire  body  of  religious  leaders,  the  noblest  men  of  his 
people  had  done  the  same  before  his  time.  It  is  probable 
that  personal  experiences  and  associations  had  a  determin- 
ing influence.  He  was  a  carpenter,  as  his  father  had  been. 
His  associates  were  humble  folk,  artisans,  small  trades- 
people, tillers  of  the  soil,  fishermen.  Grinding  poverty, 
bootless  labor,  anxious  care  for  the  morrow,  constant  suffer- 
ing from  the  pride,  the  greed  and  the  lust  of  the  well-to-do 
classes,  discontent  with  the  Koman  yoke,  the  Idumaean 
dynasty  and  the  heavy  burdens  of  taxation,  envy  and  dis- 
trust of  the  rich,  the  cultured  and  the  respectable,  were 
characteristic  features  of  his  social  environment.  To  as- 
sume that.  Jesus  had  a  certain  class  consciousness  is  not  as- 
cribing to  him  a  distinctly  modern  sentiment.  A  man  can- 
not have  spent  most  of  his  life  at  a  carpenter's  bench  and 
in  a  carpenter's  home  without  looking  out  upon  the  world 
through  a  carpenter's  eyes.  Jesus  could  not  have  left  his 
trade  at  the  mature  age  of  thirty  without  carrying  with  him 
a  sympathy  for  the  little  ones,  the  needy,  the  oppressed  and 
the  outcast,  and  an  understanding  of  their  lot  and  character 
not  so  natural  to  men  brought  up  in  surroundings  of  afflu- 
ence and  social  distinction. 

It  is  difficult  to  determine  how  far  the  views  of  Jesus  may 
have  been  influenced  by  the  opinions  of  men  with  whom  he 
was  thrown  into  contact  before  the  appearance  of  John  the 
Baptist.  It  has  been  suggested  that  he  may  have  been  a 
member  of  a  local  Essene  cult-community.  This  is,  indeed, 
highly  improbable.  Even  if  such  a  brotherhood  existed  in 
the  little  Galilean  town,  it  is  not  likely  that  Jesus  was  at  any 
time  sufficiently  attracted  by  its  principles  and  mode  of  life 
to  identify  himself  with  it.  It  seems  improbable  that,  with 
his  temper  and  in  his  circumstances,  the  anxious  observance 


THE  LIFE  OF  JESUS  255 

of  ceremonies,  tabus,  and  sacred  days,  characteristic  of  the 
Essenes,  could  have  appealed  to  him,  or  that  he  would  have 
been  willing  to  pledge  himself  to  unquestioning  obedience  to 
superiors.1  Nevertheless  there  was  much  in  Essenism  that 
must  have  found  a  ready  response  in  his  heart,  if  he  was 
acquainted  with  it,  and  much  in  his  own  teaching  and  life 
that  is  most  naturally  explained  by  the  supposition  that  he 
knew  and  was  influenced  by  it.  If  he  was  familiar  with  the 
Essenes,  he  must  have  been  favorably  impressed  with  their 
simplicity  of  life,  opposition  to  private  wealth,  contentment 
with  their  lot,  kindness  to  the  poor,  disapproval  of  slavery, 
non-resistance  of  evil,  healing  of  the  sick,  preference  for 
celibacy,  rejection  of  animal  sacrifices,  objection  to  oaths, 
reverent  contemplation  of  nature,  occupation  with  things  to 
come  and  idea  of  a  spiritual  resurrection.2  It  can  scarcely 
be  an  accident  that  so  many  of  his  own  great  convictions  are 
also  found  among  their  leading  tenets.  Particularly  impor- 

xThe  tendency  to  allegorizing  with  which  the  Essenes  are  credited 
must  also  have  seemed  to  him  unnatural.  How  far  this  penchant  as 
well  as  some  of  the  Essene  tenets  were  due  to  the  direct  influence  of 
Greek  thought,  is  difficult  to  determine.  If  Zeller  went  somewhat  too 
far  in  this  direction  by  making  Essenism  a  mere  reflection  of 
Pythagoreanism,  Lucius,  on  the  other  hand,  erred  by  denying  any  re- 
lation and  regarding  Essenism  as  nothing  but  an  exaggerated  form  of 
Pharisaism.  Greek  and  Oriental  speculation  met  in  Essenism  as  in 
Pythagoreanism. 

2  Hilgenf  eld  is  right  in  calling  attention  to  the  sporadic  opposition 
in  ancient  Israel  to  the  sacrificial  system  and  the  temple  cult.  In 
view  of  utterances  by  pre-exilie  prophets,  Ps.}  1,  Jsa.,  Ixv,  and  other 
passages,  Ohio's  contention  (Jdhrbilcher  fur  prot.  Theologie,  1887 
and  1888)  that  the  rejection  of  animal  sacrifices  proves  that  the 
Essenes  cannot  have  been  Jews,  that  therefore  the  Jewish  sect  de- 
scribed under  this  name  by  Philo  and  Josephus  never  existed,  lacks 
all  plausibility.  Hilgenfeld  believes  the  accounts,  but  also  explains 
the  Essenes  as  an  originally  non-Jewish  tribe,  whose  existence  goes 
back  to  pre-exilic  times.  Josephus  is  probably  right  in  assuming  that 
the  Essenes  came  into  existence  as  a  party  in  the  middle  of  the  second 
century.  Opposition  to  the  illegitimate  high-priesthood  may  have  oc- 
casioned the  forming  of  a  party.  Oriental  (Indian  and  Persian)  in- 
fluences came  later.  The  Greek  influence  may  have  come,  either  from 
Alexandria,  where  the  Therapeutae  lived,  or  from  the  Greek  Decapo- 
lis. 


256  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZAEETH 

tant  is  his  attitude  on  questions  where  the  Essenes  differed 
radically  from  the  Pharisees.  The  latter  believed  in  the 
principle  of  retaliation  sanctioned  by  the  law,  in  the  bearing 
of  arms,  in  the  taking  of  oaths,  in  marriage  and  divorce,  in 
the  offering  of  animal  sacrifices,  and  in  the  resurrection  of 
the  flesh  on  the  last  day.  The  views  of  Jesus  on  these  points 
seem  to  have  been  either  identical  with  or  akin  to  those  of  the 
Essenes.  His  opposition  to  the  legal  principle  of  retalia- 
tion, and  his  insistence  on  the  principle  of  overcoming  evil 
with  good  were  even  more  marked  than  those  of  the  Es- 
senes. Like  them  he  rejected  the  oath.  He  remained 
unmarried.  He  seems  to  have  commended  celibacy,  though 
recognizing  the  temporary  value  of  marriage  when  kept 
indissoluble  and  without  the  possibility  of  divorce.  He 
ignored  the  sacrificial  system,  or  advised  men  to  dispense 
with  the  proper  performance  of  sacrificial  acts  in  the  inter- 
est of  morality.  Concerning  the  resurrection  he  seems  to 
have  believed,  with  the  Essenes,  that  the  good  are  raised 
immediately  after  death  and  continue  to  live  with  God  in  a 
form  of  existence  like  that  of  the  angels,  without  sharing 
their  belief  in  the  preexistence  of  the  soul,  the  inherent  evil 
of  matter,  and  the  survival  of  all  souls.  How  far  Essene 
thought  affected  Jewish  society,  even  where  there  was  no 
organized  body  of  believers,  is  impossible  to  know.  But  the 
overlapping  of  different  spheres  of  influence  is  a  constantly 
observed  fact.  As  the  young  Josephus  seeking  for  the  truth 
found  a  Banus,  who  cannot  be  affirmed  to  have  been  an  Es- 
sene, but  apparently  stood  religiously  very  near  this  body, 
so  Jesus  in  his  youth  may  have  met  some  unknown  teacher 
whose  influence  in  some  direction  was  as  determining  as 
that  of  John  the  Baptist  later. 

The  word  of  God  came  to  John,  the  son  of  Zechariah,  in 
the  wilderness  in  the  fifteenth  year  of  Tiberius.1  There  is 

1  Luke,  iii,  1.  Where  the  home  of  Zechariah  and  Elizabeth  was  is 
not  known.  The  tradition  that  places  it  at  'Am  Karim  does  not  go 
beyond  the  twelfth  century.  Cheyne  (article,  John  the  Baptist  in 
Encyclopaedia  Biblica)  conjectures  that  'Ain  Karim  is  intended  by 
"Aenon,  near  Salim,"  t.  e.,  Jerusalem,  in  John,  iii,  23.  But  what 


THE  LIFE  OF  JESUS  257 

no  valid  ground  for  questioning  the  substantial  accuracy  of 
this  statement  of  Luke.  A  number  of  arguments  have  been 
urged  against  its  trustworthiness,  such  as  the  unquestion- 
able inaccuracies  of  the  immediate  context,  the  report  of 
Josephus  that  men  looked  upon  Herod's  defeat  by  Aretas  as 
the  judgment  of  heaven  upon  him  for  the  murder  of  John 
the  Baptist,  which  therefore  could  not  have  occurred  a  very 
long  time  before,  and  the  apparently  necessary  close  con- 
nection in  time  between  the  death  of  John,  the  divorce  of 
Aretas 's  daughter,  and  the  war  of  Aretas  upon  Herod. 
But  Volkmar1  is  probably  right  in  thinking  that  the  journey 
of  Herod  Antipas  to  Rome  on  which  he  became  enamoured 
of  Herodias,  the  wife  of  his  brother  Herod  Boethus,  was 
undertaken  early  in  the  year  29  A.  D.  to  offer  con- 
dolences on  the  death  of  Julia  Livia,  to  ingratiate  himself 
with  Se janus,  and  to  explain  his  conduct  in  the  case  of 
John,  which  might  have  given  Pilate  cause  for  complaint. 
This  scholar  probably  also  divined  the  truth,  when  he  main- 
tained that  John  the  Baptist  was  imprisoned  and  some  time 
later  put  to  death  in  the  fortress  of  Machaerus,  then  belong- 
ing to  Herod's  father-in-law  Aretas,  before  Herod's  journey 
to  Rome  and  his  marriage  to  Herodias.  Josephus2  was 
familiar  with  the  story  of  John,  his  baptism,  and  the  polit- 
ical excitement  caused  by  his  appearance,  but  he  knew 

kind  of  baptism  could  John  have  performed  there?  The  phrase 
4 ' because  there  was  much  water  there"  seems  to  indicate  that  the 
author  thought  of  a  good-sized  stream.  At  Tell  Nimrim,  northeast 
of  Jericho,  which  Cheyne  regards  as  the  place  intended  by  Bethabara 
or  Bethany  (" beyond  the  Jordan"  being  considered  as  a  gloss) 
there  is  at  least  such  a  stream.  The  Onomasticon  of  Eusebius  gives 
us  no  real  help.  It  is  not  improbable  that  John's  home  was  some- 
where near  the  Dead  Sea  or  the  Jordan,  where  Essenes  and  other 
Baptist  sects  seem  to  have  flourished. 

1  See  especially  Jesus  Nazarenus,  1882,  p.  369  ff. 

a  Ant.,  xviii,  109  ff.     There  is  no  reason  to  doubt  the  genuineness  of 
this  passage.     Had  it  been  inserted  by  a  Christian,  he  would  not  have 
forgotten  the  dramatic  incidents  of  the  gospels  and  ascribed  a  pe- 
culiar political  character  to  John's  career. 
17 


258  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZAEETH 

nothing  about  his  having  rebuked  Herod  for  marrying  the 
divorced  wife  of  his  brother.1 

But  while  John's  career  was  apparently  ended  before 
Herod  Antipas  had  offended  the  zealots  for  the  Law  by 
marrying,  contrary  to  Lev.  xviii,  16,  a  woman  who  had  been 
his  brother's  wife,2  the  death  of  the  popular  prophet  was 
laid  to  his  charge  by  many  who  possibly  cared  less  about 
the  chagrin  of  a  foreign  princess  or  even  the  degrees  of  mar- 

1  It  is  no  longer  quite  as  certain  as  it  seemed  in  the  days  of  Volk- 
mar  that  Machaerus  at  the  time  belonged  to  Aretas.  Niese,  in  his 
edition,  has  shown  that  the  present  manuscripts  do  not  read  totet 
"then,"  but  to  te,  which  probably  favors  the  following  translation: 
"She,  however,  had  already  before  sent  a  message  to  Machaerus  and 
to  the  (district)  tributary  to  her  father,  and  everything  had  been 
prepared  for  the  journey  by  the  general."  This  is  supposed  by 
Schiirer  (Geschichte,  3rd  ed.,  1901,  Vol.  I,  p.  436)  to  mean  that  she 
sent  word  both  to  the  fortress  belonging  to  Herod,  from  whom  she 
fled,  and  to  the  adjoining  territory  belonging  to  her  father.  But 
the  connection  between  Machaerus  and  "the  subject  to  her  father" 
is  too  close  to  permit  the  thought  of  two  different  messages  to  offi- 
cers of  different  governments,  and  the  construction  of  a  dative  follow- 
ing a  preposition  with  accusative  is  harsh.  If  this  was  the  original 
text,  it  is  more  natural  to  suppose  the  meaning  to  be  that  she  sent 
to  Machaerus  and  the  subordinate  (masc.)  of  her  father,  the  com- 
mander of  the  fortress.  But  it  is  difficult  to  believe  that  all  the 
earlier  editors  of  Josephus  recorded  the  more  natural  reading  without 
any  manuscript  authority.  An  editio  princeps  is  often  as  good  as  a 
manuscript. 

*  It  has  long  been  recognized  that  Matthew  made  a  mistake  when 
he  declared  that  Herodias  was  the  wife  of  Philip  (xiv,  3).  Mark 
repeated  the  error  (vi,  17).  Luke,  acquainted  with  Josephus,  avoided 
it  (iii,  19,  20)  and  spoke  only  of  Herod's  brother.  Herodias  was  the 
wife  of  Herod  Boethus,  who  lived  in  privacy  in  Jerusalem.  Their 
daughter  was  Salome,  who  afterwards  became  the  wife  of  Philip. 
The  story  of  her  dancing  before  Herod  and  being  instigated  by  her 
mother  to  ask  for  the  head  of  John  the  Baptist  on  a  charger,  which 
was  reluctantly  given  to  her  by  Herod  on  account  of  his  promise  to 
grant  her  anything  "to  the  half  of  his  kingdom,"  is  generally  ac- 
knowledged to  be  legendary.  The  historical  Antipas  "had  no  king- 
dom to  divide"  (Holtzmann).  Herodias,  considering  her  family  an 
exceptionally  good  woman,  had  no  grievance  against  John.  Christian 
exegetes  forget  that  bigamy  was  no  crime  according  to  the  Jewish 
law. 


THE  LIFE  OF  JESUS  259 

riage  forbidden  in  the  Law,  and  it  was  this  martyrdom  of 
John  that  was  remembered  when  he  was  defeated  by  Aretas, 
rather  than  the  humiliation  of  Aretas 's  daughter.  That 
some  time  passed  between  the  flight  of  the  Nabataean 
princess  and  the  war  that  ended  so  disastrously  for  Herod, 
is  evident  from  the  narrative  of  Josephus  which  mentions 
boundary  disputes.  It  should  also  be  observed  that  Aretas 
scarcely  had  any  grievance  against  Herod  because  of  his 
marrying  an  additional  wife,  while  Herod  might  have  had 
cause  for  complaint  in  the  disappearance  of  his  Arabian 
queen.  There  is  no  necessary  connection  between  the  death 
of  John  in  28  or  early  in  29  A.  D.,  the  marriage  of  Herod 
to  Herodias  on  his  return  from  Eome  in  29  A.  D.,  and  the 
great  victory  of  Aretas  in  36  A.  D.  Seven  years  is  not  too 
long  a  period  for  men  to  remember  a  prophet  in  whose 
light  they  have  rejoiced  to  walk,  and  the  memory  of  the 
martyred  prophet  is  especially  long-lived,  even  though  the 
year  and  day  may  not  be  accurately  recalled. 

If  John  appeared  in  28  A.  D.  and  was  imprisoned  and  put 
to  death  before  Herod's  departure  for  Rome  in  29  A.  D., 
it  was  probably  some  time  early  in  the  latter  year  that  Jesus 
came  to  listen  to  his  preaching.  The  Gospel  according  to 
the  Hebrews1  seems  to  have  recorded  that  his  mother  and 
brothers  urged  Jesus  to  go  with  them  to  be  baptized  by  John. 
He  at  first  objected  on  the  ground  that  he  was  not  con- 
scious of  any  sin,  but  afterwards  changed  his  mind,  consid- 
ering that  this  assertion  may  itself  have  been  a  sin.  It  is 
not  impossible  that  this  story  has  preserved  the  memory  of 
two  facts :  that  the  whole  family  was  moved  by  the  account 
of  John's  preaching  to  go  to  the  Jordan,  and  that  Jesus  at 
first  objected  to  the  ceremony  of  immersion  and  the  osten- 
tatious confession  of  sin.  This  would  be  in  harmony  with 
his  later  attitude.  Oscar  Holtzmann2  accepts  the  whole 
story  on  the  ground  that  it  could  not  have  been  invented  by 
those  who  believed  in  the  absolute  sinlessness  of  Jesus. 

1  Jerome,  Contra  Pelagium,  iii,  2;  Cyprian,  De  rebaptismate,  xvii. 
From  this  gospel  the  passage  found  its  way  into  the  Predicatio  Pauli, 
3  Leben  Jesu,  1901,  p.  93  f . 


260  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZAEETH 

This  is  indeed  true,  but  hardly  conclusive.  The  narrative 
appears  to  be  early,  without  being  wholly  reliable.  The 
motives  that  led  Jesus  to  go  were  no  doubt  his  desire  to  hear 
the  words  of  a  living  prophet  and  his  eagerness  for  every 
sign  of  the  coming  of  the  kingdom  of  heaven.  It  is  a 
precious  indication  of  his  faith  that  he  did  not  regard 
prophecy  as  a  thing  of  the  past  but  was  ready  to  hear  the 
word  of  God  from  the  lips  of  one  of  his  own  contemporaries. 
When  he  saw  the  stern  prophet  of  the  desert,  with  his  un- 
shorn hair  and  his  leathern  girdle,  and  heard  his  fierce  de- 
nunciation of  the  mighty  and  the  wise  in  their  own  conceit, 
and  his  earnest  demand  for  righteousness  of  conduct,  the 
prophets  whose  words  he  had  read  seemed  less  great.  The 
first  impression  must  have  been  overpowering.  Even  later, 
when  he  had  learned  to  discount  the  value  of  this  message 
and  was  himself  proclaiming  an  ideal  higher  than  any  that 
John  ever  dreamed  of,  he  continued  to  regard  the  Baptist 
as  the  greatest  of  all  prophets.  It  is  uncertain  whether 
John  immersed  others  in  the  Jordan,  or  set  an  example  of 
immersing  himself  in  its  waters.1  In  any  case,  the  act  was 
well  understood  to  be  something  else  than  an  ordinary  wash- 
ing, to  remove  the  uncleanness  of  the  flesh.  It  was  a  sacred 
bath,  symbolical  of  repentance  and  the  desire  to  live  a  clean 
life.  Hence  he  forbade  some  to  come  to  his  baptism  who 
declared  that,  as  sons  of  Abraham  and  members  of  the  holy 
nation,  they  were  acceptable  to  God,  and  who  showed  no 
fruits  of  repentance.  Jesus  appears  to  have  submitted  to 
the  rite.  Later  tradition  associated  various  miraculous 
features  with  the  event.  There  was  a  fire;2  the  heavens 
were  rent  asunder ;  a  dove  appeared ;  this  dove  was  the  Holy 
Ghost ;  a  voice  was  heard  by  Jesus  himself  or  by  John ;  the 
bath  kol  proclaimed  him  to  be  the  Messiah;  it  said  to  him 

1  The  latter  is  the  inference  drawn  from  the  title  by  Brandt,  Evan- 
gelische  Geschichte,  1893,  p.  457  f . 

2  Justin  seems  to  have  read  of  a  fire  in  his  copy  of  Matthew,  Dial, 
c.  Tryph.,  Ixxxviii,  315,  so  also  the  Predicatio  Pauli,  the  Gospel  ace.  to 
the  Ebionites,  quoted  by  Epiphanius,  Adv.  haer,  xxx,  13,  and  old  Latin 
versions. 


THE  LIFE  OF  JESUS  261 

' '  Thou  art  my  beloved  Son  in  whom  I  am  well  pleased, ' '  or 
"Thou  art  my  Son,  this  day  have  I  begotten  thee,"  or  "My 
Son,  in  all  the  prophets  I  expected  thee,  that  thou  shouldest 
come,  and  I  should  rest  on  thee ;  for  thou  art  my  rest,  thou 
art  my  only  begotten  Son,  who  reigneth  for  ever;"1  or  it 
said  of  him,  "This  is  my  beloved  Son  in  whom  I  am  well 
pleased."  The  Baptist  was  represented  as  hesitating,  feel- 
ing that  it  would  be  more  appropriate  for  him  to  be  bap- 
tized by  Jesus,  whom  he  recognized  as  the  Messiah,  than  the 
reverse,  but  was  graciously  reminded  that ' '  Thus  it  behooves 
us  to  fulfil  all  righteousness."  This  is  clearly  a  secondary 
thought.  It  is  manifest  from  John's  later  message2  to 
Jesus  that  nothing  of  this  kind  had  actually  happened,  and 
that  the  thought  of  Jesus  possibly  being  the  Messiah  did  not 
come  to  him  until  he  began  to  receive  reports  of  the  public 
ministry  of  the  latter.  That  Jesus  in  the  water  had  an 
ecstatic  vision  which  convinced  him  that  he  was  the  Messiah, 
is  supposed  by  some  critics.  But  there  is  no  indication  that 
he  was  a  visionary,  no  ground  for  assuming  that  he  regarded 
himself  as  the  Messiah,  and  no  justification  for  such  a  con- 
struction of  the  vacillating  and  mutually  exclusive  tradi- 
tions. Nevertheless,  the  event  had  unquestionably  a  de- 
cisive influence  on  his  future.  He  had  identified  himself 
with  the  prophetic  movement.  How  long  he  remained  with 
John,  we  do  not  know.  The  period  must  have  been  com- 
paratively short,  as  the  Baptist's  career  was  soon  cut  off  by 
his  arrest.  Antipas  was  apparently  forced  by  political  con- 
siderations to  interfere.  As  the  cry  arose  on  every  side, 
' '  The  kingdom  of  heaven  is  at  hand ! "  he  had  good  reason 
to  fear  an  intervention  by  the  Romans  similar  to  that  which 
twenty-three  years  before  had  deprived  his  brother  Arche- 
laus  of  Judaea  and  Samaria. 

The  arrest  of  John  was  an  unmistakable  call  to  Jesus  to 
take  up  his  work.  It  is  probable  that  the  news  reached  him 
in  Galilee.  If  so,  he  seems  to  have  left  the  Baptist,  either 
as  a  propagandist,  or  from  a  growing  sense  of  disappoint- 

1  Gospel  ace.  to  the  Hebrews,  Jerome,  Com.  in  Isaiam,  xi,  2. 
*Matth.,  xi,  2ff. 


THE  ^EOPHET  OF  NAZARETH 


ment,  or  to  wait  for  further  providential  leading.  There 
is  a  tradition  that  he  was  carried  by  the  Spirit  to  the  desert 
to  be  tempted  by  the  devil.1  Possibly  it  might  be  inferred 
from  this  that  he  sought  solitude  for  meditation,  and  that 
his  residence  for  some  time  was  unknown  to  his  relatives 
and  remained  so  to  his  disciples.  Matthew,  Luke,  and  the 
Gospel  according  to  the  Hebrews  give  in  different  order  and 
different  language  accounts  of  the  Satanic  temptations  that 
assailed  him.  He  was  tempted  to  satisfy  his  hunger  by 
making  bread  out  of  stones,  to  cast  himself  from  the  pin- 
nacles of  the  temple  and  to  fly  in  the  air,  and  to  fall  down 
and  worship  the  devil  in  order  to  obtain  all  the  kingdoms 
of  the  world  which  he  saw  from  an  exceedingly  high  moun- 
tain. There  is  of  course,  no  more  reason  to  believe  that 
Jesus  was  seriously  troubled  by  desires  to  turn  stones  into 
bread,  to  soar  above  the  earth  before  gaping  crowds,  or  to 
rule  as  an  emperor  even  at  the  cost  of  worshiping  the  devil, 
than  that  he  actually  was  carried  through  the  air  by  the 
devil  to  the  roof  of  the  temple,  or  to  a  mountain  so  high 
that  from  its  peak  he  could  see  round  the  globe.  The  orig- 
inal impulse  to  such  narratives  may  have  been  the  saying  of 
Jesus  recorded  in  Luke  xxii,  28.  They  seem  to  typify  the 
sort  of  temptations  supposed  to  assail  the  Messiah.  The 
devil  was  supposed  to  find  the  material  for  his  temptations 
in  Messianic  prophecies,  and  Jesus  was  supposed  to  have 
overcome  them  by  falling  back  upon  passages  in  the  Scrip- 
tures relating  to  man 's  duty.  ' '  Man  shall  not  live  by  bread 
alone ;"  "man  must  not  tempt  the  Lord,  his  God;  man  must 
worship  God  alone  and  serve  him."  These  were  indeed 
pivotal  thoughts  with  Jesus.  Such  words  may  have  been 
heard  from  his  own  lips.  In  harmony  with  them  his  life 
had  been  lived.  It  had  not  been  dominated  by  selfish  con- 
siderations ;  it  had  been  marked  by  patient  endurance  of  the 
evils  of  the  day ;  it  had  been  sustained  by  the  good  message 
that  came  from  above.  His  sensitive  soul  had  shrunk  from 
the  presumption  of  testing  how  far  God  might  go  in  helping 
him  to  perform  miracles ;  he  had  learned  to  distinguish  be- 
1Matth.,  iv,  1-11;  Luke,  iv,  1-13. 


THE  LIFE  OF  JESUS 


tween  the  sympathetic  ministry  of  healing,  whatever  his 
views  may  have  been  as  to  the  source  of  disease,  and  the 
faithless  faith  that  seeks  to  lean  upon  an  Almighty  Power 
in  undertaking  sensational,  unprofitable  and  impossible 
tasks.  He  had  understood  the  essential  impiety  of  all  polit- 
ical autocracy,  and  had  shown  no  more  desire  to  become  a 
king  of  the  Jews  or  an  emperor  of  the  world  than  to  become 
a  devil-worshiper. 

All  the  Synoptic  gospels  record  that  Jesus  went  about  in 
Galilee  proclaiming  the  coming  of  the  kingdom  of  heaven 
before  he  made  Capernaum  the  center  of  his  activity.  But 
only  Luke1  has  the  story  of  his  preaching  in  the  synagogue 
of  Nazareth  and  his  being  driven  out  of  the  town.  Such  an 
announcement  in  Nazareth  that  the  acceptable  year  of  the 
Lord  had  at  length  come,  and  that  the  fulfilment  of  the  Old 
Testament  prophecies  concerning  the  Messiah  were  now  to 
be  expected,  no  doubt  seemed  to  the  evangelist  an  appro- 
priate beginning  of  Jesus'  ministry.  He  was  unable,  how- 
ever, to  carry  out  the  scene  without  betraying  its  unhis- 
torical  character  by  the  allusion  to  the  great  works  already 
done  in  Capernaum,  the  premature  rejection  of  Israel  and 
choice  of  the  Gentiles,  his  escape  by  a  miracle,  and  other- 
wise. Some  of  the  sayings  may  have  been  uttered  by  him 
at  a  later  time.  Walking  along  the  sea  of  Galilee  Jesus  be- 
came acquainted  with  two  brothers,  Simon  also  called  Peter, 
and  Andrew,  and  they  followed  him.  They  also  seem  to 
have  offered  him  the  hospitality  of  their  home  in  Caper- 
naum.2 Two  other  brothers,  John  and  James,  sons  of  Zebe- 
dee,  soon  after  became  his  disciples.  At  Capernaum  Jesus 
spoke  in  a  synagogue.  What  he  preached  was  not  that  the 
Messiah  had  come,  and  that  he  was  the  Messiah,  but  that  the 
kingdom  of  heaven  was  at  hand.  God  would  reign  over 
men  and  make  them  happy;  let  them  therefore  turn  away 
1 IV,  16-30. 

1  Possibly  Tell  Hum  where  ruins  of  a  synagogue  exist.  But  '  *  the 
fountain  called  Kapharnaum ' '  (Josephus,  Bell.  jud.  Ill,  519  f),  was 
in  the  plain  El  Ghuweir,  either  Ain  Tabighah,  or,  moro  probably, 
Ain  Mudhawarah.  The  ruins  of  an  acqueduct  do  not  prove  that  the 
district  Tell  Hum  bore  the  same  name. 


264  THE  PBOPHET  OF  NAZAKETH 

from  their  sinful,  selfish  ways,  and  accept  in  glad  confi- 
dence the  message  of  good  things  to  come.  The  apocalyptic 
literature  clearly  shows  that  without  speculating  on  any 
Messiah  many  minds  occupied  themselves  in  Israel  with 
this  thought  of  a  perfectly  realized  theocracy,  a  new  order 
of  things  to  be  ushered  in  by  God.  God  himself  was  to  be 
the  king.  But  there  were  also  those  who  looked  eagerly  for 
an  occupant  of  the  throne  of  David  and  a  conqueror  of  the 
heathen  nations.  It  is  not  impossible  that  this  dream  of 
vengeance  and  the  pomp  of  empire  unbalanced  some  minds, 
or  caused  an  excitement  so  violent  as  to  suggest  demoniac 
possession.  If  there  is  a  basis  of  fact  in  the  narratives  of 
demons  who  recognized  Jesus  as  the  Messiah,  it  may  have 
been  the  exclamation  of  some  such  person.  It  is  not  impos- 
sible that  an  instance  of  this  kind  led  to  the  theory  that  the 
demons,  because  of  their  superhuman  knowledge,  possessed 
the  secret  of  his  identity.  But  it  would  be  quite  hazardous 
to  assume  that  the  exact  language  of  such  ravings  has  been 
preserved,  and  Mark  is  so  clearly  under  the  influence  of  his 
theory  that  any  such  utterance  is  subject  to  doubt. 

In  the  Synoptic  gospels  Jesus  appears  not  only  as  a 
preacher  to  whom  at  first  the  crowds  gladly  listened,  but 
also  as  a  physician  by  whom  multitudes  were  healed  from 
various  diseases.  Because  some  of  his  patients  are  de- 
scribed as  possessed  by  demons,  and  the  cures  as  being  ef- 
fected by  the  casting  out  of  these  demons,  and  because  the 
accounts  have  often  savored  of  the  miraculous,  critics  have 
at  times  cast  doubts  on  all  narratives  of  healing.  In  this 
they  have  probably  been  wrong.  Jesus  no  doubt  shared 
the  common  belief  in  demons,  and  the  common  explanation 
of  some  diseases  as  caused  by  temporary  or  permanent 
demoniacal  possession.  We  may,  if  we  choose,  regard  his 
diagnosis  as  faulty.  There  is  no  reason  to  doubt  that  he 
believed  in  exorcism.  He  freely  recognized  that  the  Phar- 
isees were  able  to  cast  out  demons,1  and  he  encouraged  his 
own  disciples  to  practise  exorcism.  We  may  reject  the 

1  Matth.,  xii,  27. 


THE  LIFE  OF  JESUS  265 

remedy  with  the  explanation  of  the  disease.  But  we  have 
no  right  to  question  the  occasional  efficiency  of  this  treat- 
ment. Granted  the  sincerity  of  belief  on  the  part  of  physi- 
cian and  patient  alike,  the  earnest  conviction  that  the  evil 
can  be  overcome  by  the  influence  of  a  stronger  and  holier 
spirit,  the  firmness  of  will,  the  power  of  suggestion,  the  calm 
serenity  of  confidence,  the  quickening  touch  of  sympathy; 
the  result,  particularly  in  the  case  of  nervous  disorders,  is 
too  well  attested  to  admit  of  doubt.  However  erroneous  the 
analysis  may  be,  however  mistaken  the  theory,  however  ab- 
surd the  formulas,  the  psychic  stimuli  and  sedatives,  the 
subtle  forces  disturbing  or  restoring  the  equilibrium,  may 
operate  to  the  welfare  of  the  organism.  The  physician  may 
not  himself  be  able  to  explain  the  source  of  his  power.  Es- 
pecially is  this  likely  to  be  the  case,  if  he  has  had  no  scientific 
education,  but  finds  himself  possessed  of  extraordinary  skill 
and  insight.  Not  every  one  was  intended  by  nature  to  be  a 
physician  who  had  the  advantages  of  a  medical  training, 
nor  was  everyone  sent  to  the  schools  whom  nature  ordained 
to  the  healing  ministry.  This  is  true  in  every  age.  Jesus 
seems  to  have  ascribed  his  power  to  a  spirit,  distinct  from 
himself  and  working  through  him.1  The  best  evidence  that 
he  actually  wrought  some  cures  is  the  early  tradition,  still 
preserved  in  our  gospels,  that  he  sometimes  did  not  succeed 
at  all,  and  at  other  times  effected  only  a  temporary  improve- 
ment, the  sufferer  relapsing  again  into  his  former  condition. 
But  the  great  importance  of  this  practical  work  supplement- 
ing his  teaching  lies  in  the  disposition  that  led  him  to  under- 
take it  and  the  spirit  in  which  he  continued  it.  Actuated  by 
sympathy,  he  served  men  freely,  making  his  gift  neither  a 
source  of  revenue  nor  a  stepping-stone  to  power. 

Jesus  seems  to  have  feared  the  outbursts  of  enthusiasm 
that  greeted  his  words  and  deeds.  He  retired  to  solitary 
places,  but  the  crowds  sought  and  found  him.  He  entered 

*Matth.,  xii,  28. 


266  THE  PKOPHET  OF  NAZABETH 

other  towns,  like  Chorazin1  and  Bethsaida,2  and  people  soon 
began  to  flock  around  him  there.  As  his  fame  reached  the 
prisoner  in  Machaerus,3  John  sent  a  message  to  him  asking 
whether  he  was  the  Messiah  or  they  should  look  for  an- 
other.4 Jesus  called  the  attention  of  the  messengers,  in 
figures  of  speech  borrowed  from  the  Old  Testament,  to  the 
spiritual  revival  they  were  witnessing,  but  said  nothing 
about  Messiahship.  He  neither  desired  that  John  should 
look  upon  him  as  a  claimant  for  the  throne  of  David,  nor 
would  he  encourage  him  to  go  away  from  the  manifest  signs 
of  God's  presence  in  search  for  some  aspirant  to  royal 
power.  Soon  after,  John  the  Baptist  was  put  to  death. 
The  agitation  on  behalf  of  the  Baptist  by  his  disciples,  fol- 
lowing the  manifest  disavowal  of  Messianic  claims  by  Jesus, 
may  have  determined  Herod  to  take  his  life.  Immediately 
upon  this  event,  Herod  seems  to  have  undertaken  his  journey 
to  Rome.  On  his  way  he  visited  his  brother  Herod  Boethus 
in.  Jerusalem,  and  fell  in  love  with  Herodias.  On  his  re- 
turn, she  had  secured  a  divorce,  and  he  married  her.  Some 
people  objected  to  the  marriage,  not  on  the  ground  that  he 
had  another  wife,  for  that  was  lawful,  nor  because  she  was 
divorced,  for  that  was  permitted  in  the  law,  but  on  account 
of  the  legal  prohibition  against  marrying  a  woman  who  had 
been  a  brother's  wife.5  It  is  interesting  to  observe  that  no 
censure  on  the  part  of  Jesus  has  been  recorded,  though  he 
did  not  hesitate  to  characterize  the  chief  magistrate  of  his 
people  as  a  "fox,"6  and  he  objected  to  bigamy  and  divorce 
as  well.  When  Herod  heard  of  Jesus,  he  is  said  to  have 
expressed  his  belief  that  he  was  none  else  than  John  the 
Baptist  raised  from  the  dead.7  Whether  the  words  are  actu- 
ally his  or  not,  they  show  how  current  the  opinion  was  that 

1  The  modern  Kerazeh. 

2  Probably  on  the  site  of  the  ruins  called  Et  Tell,  though  some 
scholars  have  thought  it  at  Khan  Minyeh.     Tell  Hum  is  also  possible. 

*  The  modern  Mukaur. 
'Matth.,  xi,  2ff. 

B  Leviticus,  xviii,  16. 

•  Luke,  xiii,  32. 

i.,  xiv,  2. 


THE  LIFE  OF  JESUS 


men  may  be  raised  immediately  after  death,  and  how  similar 
the  two  teachers  were.  In  his  estimate  of  John  the  Baptist,1 
Jesus  reveals  his  admiration  of  the  great  teacher,  but  also 
the  consciousness  of  his  limitations.  He  admired  the  firm- 
ness, the  courage,  the  moral  earnestness,  the  simplicity  of 
life  that  characterized  the  prophet  of  the  desert,  without 
concealing  from  himself  the  failure  of  his  terrifying  mes- 
sage to  reach  and  cleanse  the  deep-lying  fountains  of  life. 
Because,  with  all  his  greatness,  he  lacked  insight  into  the 
secret  of  the  most  radical  and  permanent  moral  and  relig- 
ious influence,  he  still  belonged  to  an  order  destined  to  pass 
away. 

It  is  impossible  to  state  how  long  time  had  elapsed  when 
Jesus  was  recalled  to  Capernaum  by  a  message  from  the 
Roman  centurion  who  had  built  the  synagogue  in  which  he 
had  once  preached.2  He  desired  him  to  heal  a  favorite 
slave.  The  messengers  were  Jewish  elders,  and  superin- 
tendents of  the  synagogue.  While  on  the  way  to  comply 
with  this  request,  Jesus  is  met  by  a  new  deputation  urging 
him  not  to  defile  himself  by  entering  the  house  of  a  Gentile, 
but  to  heal  by  a  word  of  command,  as  he  no  doubt  could  do. 
In  this  atmosphere  of  faith  the  slave,  whose  sickness  is  not 
indicated,  recovered.  Besides  adding  greatly  to  his  influ- 
ence in  Capernaum,  this  incident  is  likely  to  have  led  him  to 
reflect  on  the  artificiality  of  that  barrier  between  Jews  and 
Gentiles  which  the  principle  of  faith  so  triumphantly  over- 
stepped. Crowds  gather  in  the  house  of  Simon  to  hear  him, 
and  the  sick  are  carried  there  to  be  healed.  A  certain  class 
of  diseases  is  generally  explained  as  due  to  demoniacal  pos- 
session, but  a  man  does  not  come  into  the  power  of  a  devil, 
unless  he  has  sinned.  The  sufferers  are  therefore  con- 
stantly tormented  by  the  consciousness  of  unforgiven  sin. 
The  Pharisees  taught  that  only  God  can  forgive  sins.  His 
forgiveness  can  manifest  itself  in  two  ways :  by  priestly  ab- 
solution in  the  name  of  God,  and  by  removal  of  the  penalty, 
the  new  condition  of  health  revealing  acceptance  with  God. 

*Matth.,  xi,  7ff. 

*Matth.,  viii,  5ff.;  Luke,  vii,  1-10. 


268  THE  PROPHET  OF  NAZARETH 

Jesus  shocked  many  of  his  hearers  by  assuring  the  despon- 
dent patients  that  their  sins  were  forgiven,  and  even  more 
by  declaring  that  man  has  the  right  to  forgive  sins.1  This 
privilege  of  assuring  men  that  their  past  sins  need  not  stand 
in  the  way  of  their  entering  into  proper,  trustful  and  happy 
relations  to  God,  when  they  have  abandoned  their  sins  and 
their  disposition  is  right,  is  not  reserved  by  Jesus  for  him- 
self, or  made  the  prerogative  of  a  priestly  class,  but  freely 
assigned  to  his  disciples  and  to  all  men.  Nor  does  this 
emphasis  of  the  forgiveness  of  sin  in  the  case  of  the  sick 
show  that  Jesus  shared  the  common  prejudice  that  sickness, 
accident,  and  sudden  death  are  tokens  of  exceptional  sinful- 
ness.  He  knew  that  the  men  on  whom  the  tower  of  Siloam 
fell  were  not  sinners  above  those  that  escaped2  and  that  the 
field  on  which  no  rain  fell  did  not  necessarily  belong  to  an 
unjust  man  ;3  but  he  also  knew  that,  because  of  the  common 
doctrine,  the  sick  man  and  the  afflicted  were  in  most  need  of 
such  assurance. 

There  seems  to  have  been  a  custom  house  at  Capernaum. 
Travelers  across  the  Sea  of  Tiberias  probably  paid  toll  or 
duty.  The  officer  receiving  the  duties  belonged  to  a  class 
thoroughly  hated  and  despised,  and  generally  in  proportion 
as  they  did  their  work  faithfully.  Such  tax-gatherers  had 
many  temptations  to  practise  extortion  or  embezzlement, 
and  were  often  regarded  as  little  better  than  thieves.  Their 
apparent  alliance  with  the  detested  Roman  power  caused 
them  to  be  socially  ostracized.  The  name  of  the  customs 
official  in  Capernaum  was  Levi,  the  son  of  Alphaeus.4  This 
man  became  one  of  the  leading  disciples  of  Jesus.  Others 
of  the  same  class  were  drawn  into  the  circle.  Among  the 
women  who  with  eagerness  listened  to  his  words  there  were 
those  whose  reputation  was  bad,  either  because  it  was  known 
that  they  had  lived  in  irregular  relations,  or  it  was  sus- 

1  Matth.,  ix,  6. 

2  Luke,  xiii,  4. 
9  Matth.,  v,  45. 

4  He  seems  also  to  have  been  known  as  Matthew ;  Matth.,  ix,  9-13 ; 
Mark,  ii,  13-17;  Luke,  v,  27-32. 


THE  LIFE  OF  JESUS 


pected  that  they  had,  or  their  possession  by  demons  made  it 
evident  that  they  were  sinners.  A  woman  from  Magdala1 
by  the  name  of  Miriam  had  seven  times  been  cured  by  Jesus. 
What  her  real  disease  was  is  not  known.  Without  the 
slightest  shred  of  evidence  she  has  been  made  by  ecclesiasti- 
cal tradition  an  abandoned  woman,  and  vulgar  rationalism 
has  added  its  quota  to  the  Mary  Magdalene  legends  by 
gratuitously  making  her  the  mistress  of  Jesus.  It  is  im- 
portant that  Jesus  did  not  feel  it  to  be  his  duty  to  hold  aloof 
from  men  and  women  who,  for  one  reason  or  another,  were 
shunned  by  polite  society,  respectable  people  and  religious 
leaders.  He  conversed  with  them ;  he  greeted  them ;  he  ate 
and  drank  with  them. 

If  this  attitude  to  the  socially  ostracized  gave  rise  to  un- 
favorable comment,  criticism  increased  when  it  was  learned 
that  he  never  fasted.  It  was  so  difficult  to  conceive  of  a 
prophet  who  did  not  show  his  sainthood  by  asceticism,  that 
his  mode  of  life  seemed  to  some  critical  observers  like  a  per- 
petual debauch.  It  began  to  be  said:  "He  is  a  glutton 
and  a  wine-bibber."2  John  could  be  understood;  he  ate 
locusts  and  wild  honey,  drank  no  wine,  let  his  hair  grow, 
and  wore  a  leathern  girdle.  But  what  manner  of  man  was 
this  who  ate  bread  with  publicans  and  drank  wine  with  har- 
lots, and  never  stopped  to  fast?  When  he  was  asked  why 
he  did  not  fast,  he  said  that  it  was  not  worth  the  while  to 
put  a  new  piece  on  an  old  garment  or  to  pour  new  wine  into 
old  skins.3  The  old  and  the  new  will  not  mix,  and  com- 
promises are  of  no  permanent  value.  Most  offense,  how- 
ever, was  caused  by  his  breaking  the  sabbath.  Once  his 
disciples  went  through  a  field  on  the  sabbath  and,  as  they 
were  hungry,  picked  the  grain  and  husked  it  between  their 
fingers.  When  they  were  accused  for  this,  he  defended 
them  by  saying  that  David  set  aside  the  law  when  he  de- 
manded of  Abimelech  at  Nob  the  shew-bread  which  none 
but  the  priests  were  permitted  to  eat,  and  that  the  priests 

rLuke,  viii,   2.     Possibly  Mejdel,  or   some  place  in  the  vicinity. 
3  Matth.,  xi,  19. 
8  Matth.,  ix,  14-17. 


i 


270  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZAEETH 

every  sabbath  broke  the  day  of  rest  by  carrying  on  their 
sacrificial  work.1  It  matters  little  that  he  forgot  the  name 
of  the  priest2  and  that  he  wrongly  supposed  the  priestly 
regulation  he  had  in  mind  to  have  been  in  force  in  the  time 
of  David.  He  squarely  faced  the  issue,  and  defended  sab- 
bath-breaking by  citing  an  instance  when  the  law,  as  he 
thought,  was  broken  by  David,  and  a  fact  showing  that  even 
the  priests  did  not  observe  the  absolute  cessation  of  work. 
Nor  did  he  claim  any  special  dispensation  for  himself  and 
his  disciples.  He  grandly  concluded  his  answer  by  declar- 
ing that  the  sabbath  was  made  for  the  sake  of  man,  and  not 
man  for  the  sake  of  the  sabbath,  and  that  therefore  man  is 
lord  also  of  the  sabbath.  He  regarded  it  as  a  matter  for 
man  himself  to  decide  what  he  should  do  with  his  day  of 
rest.  On  any  day  he  deemed  it  right  to  do  what  was  in  it- 
self right  and  good,  and  on  any  day  he  considered  it  wrong 
to  omit  a  deed  of  kindness  that  could  be  done.  Hence  he 
worked  as  a  physician  on  the  sabbath  as  well  as  on  other 
days. 

It  would  be  difficult  to  overestimate  the  importance  of  this 
breach  with  the  Law.  Aside  from  circumcision  there  was 
no  custom  prescribed  in  the  Mosaic  Codes  on  which  more 
stress  was  laid  than  on  the  observance  of  the  sabbath.  It 
was  one  of  the  chief  characteristics  of  Judaism  in  the  eyes 
of  other  nations.  The  opposition  to  Jesus  on  the  part  of  the 
conservative  religious  leaders  grew  too  strong  for  him  to 
remain  safely  in  Capernaum.  He  retired  with  some  of  his 
friends  to  the  sea-shore.  But  he  could  not  escape  his  grow- 
ing fame.  People  came  from  all  parts  of  Galilee  in  search 
of  him.  He  was  forced  to  move  about  from  place  to  place. 
While  the  crowds  came  and  went,  there  gradually  formed 
about  him  a  little  band  of  men  and  women  who  followed 
him  withersoever  he  went.  Tradition  has  it  that  he  chose 
twelve  men  to  be  his  disciples.3  The  precise  number  is  not 
certain.  It  may  be  that  "the  twelve"  is  merely  expressive 

1  Matth.,  xii,  1  ff. ;  Mark,  ii,  23  ff . 

2  According  to  Marie,  ii,  26,  he  said  Abiathar  instead  of  Abimelech. 
3 Matth.,  xi,  1  ff.;  Marie,  iii,  13  ff.;  Luke,  vi,  13  ff. 


THE  LIFE  OF  JESUS  271 

of  a  later  idea  that  there  should  be  one  apostle  for  each  of 
the  twelve  tribes  of  Israel.  The  number  of  the  twelve  apos- 
tles is  as  fictitious  as  that  of  the  twelve  patriarchs  and  the 
twelve  tribes,  and  tradition  was  quite  uncertain  in  regard 
to  their  names.  The  comparatively  small  group  of  men  and 
women  that  thus  attached  itself  more  permanently  to  the 
Galilean  teacher  was  probably  the  result  of  natural  selection 
rather  than  of  a  formal  choice.  They  received  a  twofold 
education  for  future  service.  The  importance  of  his  teach- 
ing which  they  enjoyed  is  generally  recognized.  But  not 
less  valuable  was  the  communal  life  informed  by  his  spirit 
in  which  it  was  their  privilege  to  live.  They  had  left  all 
their  former  relations  and  all  that  they  possessed  for  the 
kingdom  of  heaven.  They  lived  simply,  and  their  scanty 
needs  were  met  especially  by  the  means  of  the  women  who 
devoted  their  property  to  the  cause,1  but  also  by  the  indi- 
vidual efforts  of  the  fishermen,2  and  by  free  gifts.  What 
they  had,  they  held  in  common.  One  among  them  seems  to 
have  been  entrusted  with  the  administration  of  their 
finances.3  The  common  meal  was  a  symbol  of  their  unity. 
They  gladly  shared  their  bread  and  fish  with  the  people  that 
came  to  listen  to  Jesus.  Such  services  as  each  could  render 
were  freely  given.  They  worked  for  the  good  of  men  ac- 
cording to  their  ability  and  opportunity,  as  all  men  should ; 
they  lived  on  charity,  as  all  men  in  reality  do,  kings  as  well 
as  beggars,  but  the  principle  was  too  potent  to  permit  the 
existence  among  them  of  either  kings  or  beggars.  No  one 
lorded  it  over  his  brothers,  least  of  all  Jesus  himself.  The 
need  of  intimacies  and  of  solitude  was  recognized.  Jesus 
often  communed  with  Peter,  James  and  John;  and  he  at 
times  retired  for  a  night  to  be  alone  with  himself  and  the 
Heavenly  Father.  It  was  not  an  ideal  society;  but  Jesus 

1  Luke,  viii,  3. 

2  Peter  obtained  by  fishing  the  money  to  pay  the  temple- tax ;  and 
that  was  surely  not  the  only  time  he  followed  his  trade. 

8  John,  xii,  6,  may  have  been  drawn  from  a  trustworthy  source. 
Cheyne's  conjecture  (article  Judas  in  Encyclopaedia  Biblica),  "he 
was  a  harsh  man ' '  for  ' '  he  was  a  thief, ' '  has  much  to  commend  it. 


272  THE  PKOPHET  OF  NAZAKETH 

earnestly  sought  to  embody  in  its  life  the  principles  of  the 
coming  kingdom  of  heaven,  to  make  it  a  sample  of  the 
society  that  was  to  be.  And  it  certainly  was  pregnant  with 
some  ideals  that  are  yet  waiting  for  recognition  in  human 
society  at  large. 

The  so-called  Sermon  on  the  Mount  is  probably  not  a  ser- 
mon addressed  to  a  large  congregation  of  people ;  it  is  doubt- 
ful whether  it  was  spoken  on  a  mountain  or  on  a  plain ;  and 
it  is  not  certain  that  either  Matthew1  or  Luke2  has  recorded 
the  address  in  its  original  form.  Its  ringing  sentences  were 
apparently  first  uttered  in  the  privacy  of  his  more  immedi- 
ate followers.  Both  as  a  method  of  instruction  and  as  a 
means  of  self -protection,  Jesus  seems  to  have  adopted  the 
use  of  the  parable  for  public  discourse.3  It  is  indeed  im- 
probable that  he  spoke  to  the  people  exclusively  in  parables. 
He  certainly  answered  directly  many  a  question,  and  many 
an  epigrammatic  saying  has  no  doubt  been  preserved  from 
a  public  address  not  at  all  confined  to  the  narration  of  par- 
ables. But  it  is  altogether  likely  that  he  employed  by  pref- 
erence the  parabolic  form  of  teaching  when  he  found  him- 
self confronted  by  a  mixed  and  partly  hostile  audience, 
while  he  spoke  more  directly  and  openly  in  the  presence  of 
his  disciples  and  friends.  The  searching  criticism  of  funda- 
mental principles  of  the  Mosaic  law  and  of  the  common 
practices  of  piety  as  well  as  the  unfolding  of  the  higher 
righteousness  of  the  kingdom  of  heaven  may  plausibly  be 
regarded  as  having  formed  a  part  of  his  private  instruction. 
Yet  there  is  nothing  esoteric  about  this  teaching.  He  never 
set  forth  in  public  views  different  from,  and  more  accept- 
able than,  those  he  presented  in  private,  and  made  no  at- 
tempt at  concealment  of  his  real  attitude  to  the  Law.  He 

1  v,  i  ff . 

2  VI,  20-49. 

8  The  object  was  of  course  not  to  conceal  from  men  in  general  the 
mysteries  of  the  kingdom  of  heaven  or  to  harden  their  hearts  and 
make  them  ripe  for  their  doom,  as  Matth.,  xiii,  10  ff .  and  parallels 
represent  it.  Jesus  spoke  to  be  understood  and  to  lead  men  to  re- 
pentance and  knowledge  of  the  truth;  but  the  result  seemed  to  the 
evangelists  to  be  none  else  than  that  described  in  Isaiah,  vi,  9  ff . 


THE  LIFE  OF  JESUS  273 

freely  denounced  as  immoral  the  conjugal  relations  of  the 
Pharisees,  though  they  lived  quite  in  harmony  with  both 
the  letter  and  the  spirit  of  the  law.  There  is  scarcely  a 
principle  laid  down  in  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount  that  is  not 
expressed  in  parables,  repliques,  or  epigrams  addressed  to 
the  multitudes  or  to  his  enemies.  It  is  possible  that  in  such 
familiar  intercourse  with  his  disciples  Jesus  at  one  time  sug- 
gested what  it  would  be  proper  to  pray  for,  the  advent  of 
the  kingdom  of  heaven,  bread  for  the  coming  day,  pardon 
for  sin,  and  freedom  from  temptation.1  Such  desires  were 
of  course  to  be  voiced  in  the  closet,  and  not  in  public.  The 
church  made  a  formula  of  these  suggestions,  enlarged  the 
number  of  its  petitions,  and  recited  it  in  public. 

As  some  of  his  disciples  entered  into  the  spirit  of  his 
teaching  and  felt  his  power,  they  began  themselves  to  ad- 
dress the  crowds.  Upon  one  occasion  some  who  had  gone 
ahead  of  the  company  had  not  only  preached  repentance 
and  announced  the  coming  of  the  kingdom  of  heaven,  but 
had  also  succeeded  in  casting  out  devils,  i.  e.,  in  healing  sick 
persons.  They  came  rejoicing  and  reported  this  to  Jesus. 
He  shared  their  joy,  and  exclaimed:  "I  see  Satan  falling 
from  heaven."2  If  they  could  do  what  he  did,  the  good 
time  was  certainly  coming  when  the  power  of  Satan  over 
men  would  be  ended.  As  dangers  surrounded  them,  he  en- 
couraged his  disciples  to  be  brave,  and  not  to  fear  men  who 
could  only  kill  the  body,  but  not,  as  God,  the  soul  also.3  In 
his  wanderings  Jesus  once  came  to  the  other  side  of  the 
lake  where  the  ten  Greek  cities  were.4  The  story  is  told  that 
outside  of  one  of  them  he  drove  out  a  demon  called  Legion 
from  a  man  and  allowed  the  demon  to  enter  a  herd  of  swine 
which  rushed  into  the  sea  and  were  drowned.5  What 

1  The  account  in  Luke,  xi,  1-4,  is  more  original  than  that  in  Matth., 
vi,  9-15.  Various  additions  have  been  made  to  the  four  objects 
possibly  mentioned  by  Jesus.  The  Gospel  according  to  the  Hebrews 
shows  by  its  lehem  mdhar  that  the  bread  for  the  coming  day  is  in- 
tended. 

*Luke,  x,  17-22. 

"Lulce,  xii,  4,  5.  *With  the  exception  of  Scythopolis. 

6  Matth.,  viii,  28-34  j  Marie,  v,  1-20  j  Luke,  viii,  26-39, 
19 


274  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZAEETH 

actually  happened,  cannot  be  determined.  The  fact  that 
between  the  fall  of  Jerusalem  in  70  A.  D.  and  the  insurrec- 
tion of  Simon  bar  Kozeba  in  132  A.  D.  a  Koman  legion  was 
located  in  that  part  of  the  Decapolis  seems  to  have  had 
something  to  do  with  the  form  of  the  story.  The  extraordi- 
nary calm  and  self-possession  of  Jesus  in  the  midst  of  a 
storm  may  be  sufficient  to  account  for  the  story  of  his  walk- 
ing on  the  water.1  According  to  the  reported  words  of 
Jesus,  the  daughter  of  Jairus  was  not  dead,  but  asleep, 
probably  a  deep  comatose  sleep,  from  which  he  aroused  her.2 
This  seems  to  have  been  the  basis  of  reports  to  the  effect 
that  he  could  raise  even  the  dead.  Whether  the  miracle  of 
the  feeding  of  the  five  thousand  grew  out  of  a  misunderstood 
saying  of  Jesus,3  or  developed  from  an  actual  experience  of 
a  small  supply  of  bread  and  fish  going  very  far  to  satisfy  a 
large  crowd,  must  be  left  in  doubt. 

Conditions  in  Galilee  became  more  insecure  for  Jesus  and 
his  disciples  after  a  number  of  Pharisees  had  arrived  from 
Jerusalem,  either  from  curiosity  or  for  the  purpose  of  check- 
ing the  dangerous  movement.4  They  may  have  been  invited 
by  Galilean  Pharisees  who  had  been  seriously  scandalized  by 
the  life  and  teaching  of  Jesus,  and  offended  by  his  un- 
measured denunciations.  He  had  attacked  them  as  a  class, 
very  much  as  Amos  and  Hosea,  Isaiah  and  Jeremiah  had  at- 
tacked priests  and  prophets  without  discrimination.  His 
compassion  for  the  multitudes  that  were  like  sheep  without 
a  shepherd  had  intensified  his  distrust  of  these  teachers  who 
had  the  key  to  the  understanding,  but  neither  entered  in 
themselves  nor  permitted  others  to  do  so,  and  his  indigna- 

1  Matih.,  xiv,  22-33 ;  Marie,  vi,  45-52.  But  miracles  of  a  similar  sort 
related  of  Moses,  Joshua,  Elijah  and  Elisha  may  also  have  helped  to 
shape  the  story. 

2Matth.,  ix,  24;  MarTc,  v,  39;  Luke,  viii,  52.  As  this  cure  has  grown 
into  a  veritable  miracle  under  the  hands  of  the  Evangelists,  so  the 
accompanying  story  of  the  woman  who  had  an  issue  of  blood  is  likely 
to  have  grown.  No  reliance  can  be  placed  on  the  words  said  to  have 
been  spoken.  It  was  clearly  a  faith-cure. 

•Matth.,  xvi,  6,  10  ff. 

'Matth.,  xv,  1  ff.j  MarTc,  vii,  1, 


THE  LIFE  OF  JESUS  275 

tion  at  their  self-complacency,  formalism,  and  greed.  The 
learned  men  from  the  Judaean  capital  soon  observed  that 
the  disciples  of  Jesus  did  not  wash  their  hands  before  their 
meals.  This  was  an  important  discovery.  What  did  Jesus 
teach  concerning  sacred  ablutions?  He  promptly  came  to 
the  defense  of  his  disciples.  No,  he  did  not  believe  in  these 
ceremonies.  They  were  the  traditions  of  men  by  which  the 
commandments  of  God  were  set  aside.  Lest  they  should 
misunderstand  him,  and  imagine  that  he  had  only  drawn  a 
distinction  between  the  oral  law  and  the  written  law,  he 
hastens  to  make  it  plain  that  he  rejected  the  whole  system 
of  tabus  laid  down  in  the  Old  Testament.  *  *  Hear  me,  all  of 
you,  and  understand!"  he  cries.  " There  is  nothing  from 
without  the  man,  that  going  into  him  can  defile  him ;  but  the 
things  that  proceed  out  of  the  man  are  those  that  defile 
him."  Mark  correctly  understood  him:  (''This  he  said) 
making  all  meats  clean. ' J1  He  had  broken  with  the  Law  in 
regard  to  the  tabus,  as  he  had  in  regard  to  the  sabbath. 

The  Pharisees  then  tried  to  persuade  the  people  that  he 
cast  out  demons  through  the  power  of  Beelzebul,  chief  of 
the  demons.2  Jesus  met  the  attack  by  pointing  out  that,  if 
Satan  drives  out  Satan,  his  kingdom  is  divided  against  it- 
self and  cannot  remain  (good  would  be  accomplished 
through  the  evil  spirit  possessing  him),  that  a  man  cannot 
enter  and  plunder  a  strong  man's  house  without  binding 
him  first,  that  the  exorcists  among  the  Pharisees  would  be 
liable  to  the  same  heinous  charge,  and  finally  that  this  ac- 
cusation was  not  merely  slander  against  a  fellow-man,  but 
blasphemy  against  the  good  spirit  through  which  the 
demons  had  been  cast  out.  Whatever  is  said  against  a  man 
may  be  forgiven,  but  blasphemy  against  the  divine  spirit 
cannot  be  forgiven. 

This  conflict  must  have  revealed  to  Jesus,  if  he  had  had 
any  doubts  on  the  point,  how  little  hope  there  was  of  find- 
ing Judaea  better  prepared  than  Galilee  for  his  radical  gos- 
pel. He  determined  to  leave  his  people,  at  least  tempora- 

1VII,  19. 

2  Matth.,  xii,  24  ff . ;  Lulce,  xi,  14  flf . 


276  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZARETH 

rily,  and  to  betake  himself  to  Phoenicia.  Before  departing, 
however,  he  seems  to  have  desired  to  see  once  more  his 
native  town.  But  in  Nazareth  he  found  himself  unable  to 
do  any  mighty  works.1  He  could  effect  no  cures  in  an  at- 
mosphere of  scepticism  and  hostility.  His  mother  and 
brothers  who  had  gained  the  impression  that  he  was  beside 
himself,2  when  they  visited  him  on  a  former  occasion,  are 
not  likely  to  have  given  him  any  comfort  now.  It  is  pos- 
sible that  people  clamored  for  miracles,  or  at  least  for  such 
wonderful  healings  as  had  been  wrought  in  Capernaum, 
that  they  who  thought  they  knew  him  so  well  pointed  out 
some  of  his  defects,  and  that  he  suggested  his  conviction 
that  God  had  a  work  for  him  to  do  among  the  Gentiles  by 
mentioning  the  examples  of  the  Phoenician  woman  and 
Naaman. 

With  a  heavy  heart,  no  doubt,  he  went  into  exile.  There 
is  no  reason  to  question  the  assistance  he  gave  to  the  child 
of  a  Phoenician  woman.3  But  the  conversation  that  is  said 
to  have  taken  place  is  quite  incredible.  It  is  as  impossible 
to  believe  that  Jesus  should  have  refused  to  help  a  sufferer 
in  Northern  Syria  on  the  ground  that  it  would  not  be  right 
to  help  a  dog  of  a  Gentile,  as  that  he  would  praise  as  an  in- 
stance of  marvelous  faith  her  willingness  to  debase  herself 
by  accepting  such  a  gratuitous  insult  in  order  to  secure  a 
favor.  It  is  sad  enough  that  a  Jewish  Christian  was  still 
capable  of  inventing  this  story.  The  more  difficult  it  was 
to  make  his  thought  understood  in  these  foreign  parts,  the 
more  anxious  Jesus  must  have  been  to  commend  his  message 
by  deeds  of  kindness.  How  long  he  remained  abroad,  we 
do  not  know. 

On  a  visit  to  Caesarea  Philippi4  the  purpose  seems  to  have 
matured  within  him  to  go  to  Jerusalem  in  order  to  proclaim 
there  the  coming  of  the  kingdom  of  heaven.5  The  carpenter 

1  Marie,  vi,  5. 

2  Marie,  iii,  21. 

9  Matth.,  xv,  21-28;  Marie,  vii,  24-30. 

4  The  modern  Baniyas. 

6  Matth.,  xvi,  13  ff.  j  Marie,  viii,  27  ff .  j  Luke,  ix,  18  ff. 


THE  LIFE  OF  JESUS  277 

of  Nazareth  knew  very  well  that  no  man  undertakes  to  build 
a  house  without  first  counting  its  cost.  He  had  already  had 
an  encounter  with  the  scribes  of  the  Holy  City,  and  knew 
what  to  expect.  There  also  was  great  danger  in  the  Mes- 
sianic speculations.  To  gauge  the  precise  extent  of  this 
danger,  he  asked  his  disciples  what  men  were  saying  about 
him.  They  answered  that  some  regarded  him  as  John  the 
Baptist ;  some,  as  Elijah ;  and  others,  as  Jeremiah,  or  one  of 
the  prophets.  If  this  answer  was  in  a  measure  reassuring, 
there  still  remained  a  possibly  more  serious  danger.  What 
did  they  think  themselves  ?  Peter  declared  that  he  believed 
him  to  be  the  Messiah.  By  this  he  probably  meant  that  he 
hoped  he  was  the  one  who  should  deliver  Israel.  Whether 
this  was  the  expectation  of  the  whole  band  of  disciples,  or 
only  Peter's  own  view,  and  how  far  Peter  looked  upon  the 
Master 's  words  as  a  leading  question,  and  felt  called  upon  to 
make  a  proclamation  that  would  change  the  career  of  Jesus, 
cannot  be  known.  But  Peter  was  doomed  to  disappoint- 
ment. It  was  not  the  first  time  he  had  failed  to  divine  the 
purpose  and  meaning  of  the  words  of  Jesus.  But  never 
had  be  been  more  quickly  undeceived  and  disenchanted. 
Jesus  charged  his  disciples  not  to  say  that  he  was  the  Mes- 
siah. He  did  not  wish  that  men  should  believe  in  him  as 
the  Messiah  and  confess  him  as  such.  That  is  perfectly 
clear  from  what  has  been  permitted  to  remain  in  the  ac- 
count. What  more  he  may  have  said  to  change  their  views 
upon  the  subject,  and  to  show  them  how  foreign  to  his  mind 
were  the  hopes  of  royalty,  we  can  only  surmise  from  a  state- 
ment thickly  overlaid  by  a  later  tradition.  He  began  to 
show  them  how  dangerous  was  the  mission  on  which  he  was 
setting  out,  how  probable  it  was  that  he  would  meet  with  the 
fate  of  so  many  a  prophet  before  him.  When  Peter,  full  of 
the  dreams  of  empire,  nevertheless  held  up  his  Messianic 
hope,  and  in  the  name  of  God  protested  against  any  fears 
of  suffering  and  death,  he  was  sternly  rebuked  by  a  "Get 
thee  behind  me,  Satan,  thou  art  a  stumbling  block  to  me,  for 
thou  mindest  not  the  things  of  God,  but  the  things  of  men ! ' ' 
It  is  impossible  not  to  see  the  tremendous  anxiety  of  Jesus 


278  THE  PROPHET  OF  NAZARETH 

to  put  a  stop  to  these  Messianic  delusions.  Ecclesiastical 
upholders  of  the  authority  of  Peter  thought  to  change  this 
stumbling  block  into  a  rock  on  which  a  church  might  be 
built,  but  it  remains  a  stumbling-block  to  an  understanding 
of  the  spirit  of  Jesus. 

The  story  that  Jesus  on  the  following  sabbath  was  trans- 
figured before  his  disciples,  that  his  garments  became  glis- 
tening, exceeding  white  so  as  no  fuller  on  earth  can  whiten 
them,  and  that  Moses  and  Elijah  appeared  with  him,1  seems 
to  have  been  patterned  after  the  story  in  Exodus  xxxiv, 
27-30  of  the  glory  on  Moses 's  face  when  he  came  down  from 
the  Mount,  under  the  influence  of  these  stories  of  the  mys- 
terious body,  which  some  accounts  of  the  resurrection 
showed  him  to  have  possessed,  like  that  of  the  risen  or 
translated  heroes  of  ancient  Israel.  As  a  foil,  the  evan- 
gelist pictures  the  vain  attempts  of  the  disciples  at  the  foot 
of  the  mountain  to  cast  out  a  devil  from  a  sick  boy,  his 
impatience  with  them  for  not  having  faith  enough  to  expel 
the  devil,  his  own  successful  exorcism,  and  his  explanation 
that  the  particular  kind  of  demon  possessing  the  boy  could 
be  driven  out  only  by  prayer  and  fasting.  The  account  is 
scarcely  historical. 

Having  set  his  face  steadfastly  to  go  to  Jerusalem,  Jesus 
desired  once  more  to  visit  the  scenes  of  his  labors  in  Galilee. 
No  crowds  welcomed  him  this  time  in  Capernaum.  It  is 
evident  that  his  radicalism,  condemned  by  learned  and  pious 
men,  had  made  even  the  common  people  afraid  of  having 
anything  to  do  with  him.  It  was  not  safe  to  expose  oneself 
to  the  fascination  of  his  eloquence,  or  to  receive  temporary 
benefits  at  the  risk  of  possibly  dealing  with  Beelzebul. 
There  could  be  no  doubt  that  he  had  rejected  the  divine  law. 
Therefore  he  was  himself  rejected.  The  tax-gatherers  who 
in  the  month  before  the  Passover  were  collecting  the  half- 
shekel  paid  by  every  Israelite  according  to  the  law2  for  the 
support  of  the  temple  service  were  not  sure  whether  he  had 
put  himself  so  far  outside  the  pale  of  Judaism  as  to  refuse 

lMatth.,  xvii,  Iff.;  MarTc,  ix,  2ff.;  LuTce,  ix,  28  ff. 
*  Exodus,  xxx,  11-16. 


THE  LIFE  OF  JESUS  279 

to  pay  this  tax.1  They  had  reason  for  asking  Peter  in  re- 
gard to  the  matter,  as  the  attitude  of  Jesus  showed.  He  at 
once  began  to  question  the  propriety  of  paying  this  tax. 
Were  they  to  be  forced  to  pay  a  tribute  in  money  to  God, 
as  foreign  subjects  are  forced  to  pay  to  an  emperor,  or  were 
their  relations  to  God  to  be  free  from  such  exactions,  like 
those  of  sons  to  an  earthly  ruler?  Jesus  broke  with  the 
principle  of  compulsory  support  of  religion,  as  he  had  with 
the  principle  of  compulsory  sabbath-keeping  or  observance 
of  religious  tabus.  Whether  he  also  meant  to  intimate  that 
those  who  realized  such  filial  relations  to  God  might  leave 
the  supply  of  flesh  for  the  altar  and  delicacies  for  the 
priests  to  those  who  in  reality  were  strangers  to  God  and 
his  spiritual  demands,  is  less  certain.  In  any  case,  he 
thought  it  expedient  to  make  the  payment,  Peter  obtaining 
the  necessary  amount  by  resorting  to  his  old  trade.2 

Jesus  first  planned  to  go  through  Samaria  to  Judaea.  He 
did  not  share  the  common  prejudice  against  this  people,  as 
the  parable  of  the  Good  Samaritan  shows.  It  was  quite 
customary  for  Galileans  to  pass  through  Samaria  on  their 
way  to  Jerusalem.  But  conflicts  often  arose  between  Jews 
and  Samaritans.  Jesus  seems  to  have  sent  James  and  John 
to  prepare  the  way.3  These  hot-headed  and  ambitious  men 
met  with  opposition,  and  came  back  expressing  the  wish  that 
fire  might  fall  from  heaven  and  devour  the  Samaritans. 
Jesus  rebuked  them  for  cherishing  the  spirit  of  the  old 
prophet  Elijah.  He  then  decided  to  go  through  Peraea. 
While  there,  some  Pharisees  warned  him  that  Herod  would 
put  him  to  death.4  They  probably  feared  that  he  would  re- 
main in  Peraea.  He  requested  them  to  tell  "the  fox"  that 
he  was  doing  good  by  casting  out  demons  and  was  on  his 
way  to  Jerusalem,  which  should  show  that  he  was  not  afraid 
of  death,  for  Jerusalem  had  killed  many  a  prophet. 

1Matth.f  xvii,  24  ff. 

alt  is  perfectly  obvious  how  the  miracle  of  the  coin  in  the  fish's 
mouth  originated. 
8  Luke,  ix,  51-56. 
*  Luke,  xiii,  31-33. 


280  THE  PROPHET  OF  NAZAKETH 

Some  characteristic  episodes  may  have  occurred  at  this 
time.  A  young  lawyer  asked  him:  "Good  Master,  what 
shall  I  do  to  inherit  eternal  life?"  Jesus  objected  to  his 
calling  him  "good/7  as  none  but  God  could  be  said  to  be 
good,  told  him  to  live  a  righteous  life  in  harmony  with  God's 
commandments,  and  finally  advised  him  to  sell  all  that  he 
had  and  join  the  little  company.1  His  departure  gave  Jesus 
occasion  to  comment  on  the  difficulty  with  which  the  rich 
could  enter  the  kingdom  of  heaven.  On  the  other  hand, 
the  rude  act  of  his  disciples  in  pushing  aside  some  women 
who  wanted  Jesus  to  touch  their  little  ones,  gave  him  an 
opportunity  to  praise  the  little  children  as  happy  because 
they  would  live  to  see  the  blessings  of  the  kingdom  of 
heaven,2  and  to  point  out  that  only  those  who  had  a  child- 
like spirit  were  fit  for  the  coming  society.  Some  ambitious 
request  by  the  sons  of  Zebedee  or  their  mother  had  been  re- 
buked by  Jesus  in  private ;  then  he  felt  it  necessary  to  im- 
press upon  the  whole  company  the  difference  between  his 
ideal  of  society  and  the  actually  existing  forms  of  social  life. 
The  latter  were  based  on  authority  and  obedience  to  author- 
ity, the  former  on  service  and  ambition  to  serve.3 

In  Jericho,  people  gathered  to  see  the  Galilean  prophet. 
The  superintendent  of  customs,  a  man  by  the  name  of 
Zacchaeus,  climbed  up  in  a  tree  to  have  a  better  view. 
When  Jesus  perceived  him  and  learned  who  he  was,  he 
asked  him  to  receive  him  and  his  companions  in  his  house. 
This  Zacchaeus  gladly  did.4  The  usual  criticism  of  such 
fraternizing  with  publicans  was  made  by  the  Pharisees. 

Some  evangelist  read  in  the  book  of  Zechariah5  a  passage 
supposed  to  refer  to  the  Messiah,  in  which  a  king  enters 
Jerusalem  seated  on  an  ass.  Not  understanding  the  par- 
allelism characteristic  of  prophetic  and  poetic  style,  he 
added  an  ass's  colt,  and  made  the  Messiah  ride  on  both. 

1Matth.,  xix,  16  ff.;  Marie,  x,  17  ff.;  LuTce,  xviii,  18  ff. 
*Matth.,  xix,  13  ff.;  MarJc,  x,  13  ff.;  Luke,  xviii,  15  ff. 
•Matth.,  xx,  20-28;  Marie,  x,  35-45;  Luke,  xxii,  24-30. 
*Luke,  xix,  1-10. 
•IX,  9. 


THE  LIFE  OF  JESUS  281 

This  could  not,  of  course,  refer  to  the  still  expected  advent 
of  the  Messiah.  For  that  was  to  be  in  the  sky.  There 
was  no  room  for  its  fulfilment,  therefore,  except  at  the  last 
entrance  of  Jesus  into  Jerusalem.  The  evangelist  cherished 
no  doubt  that  the  prophecy  had  then  been  fulfilled,  and  felt 
confident  that  the  people  must  by  this  sign  have  recognized 
its  king  and  hailed  him  joyously  as  their  Messiah.1  But 
that  Jesus  should  have  suddenly  changed  his  whole  view  of 
life  and  his  attitude  to  the  royalist  movement,  that  he  should 
have  sacrificed  his  prophetic  ministry,  conceived  in  so  lofty 
a  spirit,  to  fan  the  flames  of  a  political  insurrection,  that 
the  man,  whose  convictions  had  led  him  to  break  with  fun- 
damental principles  of  the  law  at  the  risk  of  reputation  and 
life,  and  had  resisted  as  a  satanic  temptation  the  idea  of 
marching  to  power  by  the  means  of  the  aspirant  for  a 
throne,  should  have  deliberately  set  about  to  arrange  the 
details  of  a  sensational  entry  into  Jerusalem  in  accordance 
with  a  misunderstood  prophetic  passage,  is  as  inconceivable 
as  the  development  of  the  story  is  easy  to  explain.  The 
death  on  Calvary  was  not  so  tragic  as  such  a  surrender  of 
his  ideal  would  have  been. 

The  event  that  really  brought  about  the  violent  end  of  his 
career  was  of  a  different  character  and  in  perfect  harmony 
with  his  life  and  his  convictions.  In  Bethany,2  near  Jeru- 
salem, he  found  a  restful  home  with  two  sisters  inclined  to 
show  hospitality  to  the  Galilean  prophet.3  From  here  he 
quietly  entered  the  city,  and  betook  himself  to  the  temple. 
What  he  saw,  as  he  stepped  into  the  outer  courts,  stirred 

1  Matthew  (xxi,  1)  states  that  Bethphage  was  the  village  where  the 
two  asses  on  which  Jesus  sat  were  procured.  Mark,  who  knew  that 
Jesus  had  friends  in  Bethany  maintains  that  this  was  the  village 
(xi,  1).  Luke  (xix,  29)  combined  the  two  so  unskillfully  that  Beth- 
phage, which  is  nearer  to  Jerusalem,  came  first.  The  story  in  Matthew 
has  the  appearance  of  greatest  originality:  the  mise  en  scene  is  most 
dramatic,  and  the  Old  Testament  basis  most  evident. 

8  The  modern  El  Azariyeh. 

*  Luke,  x,  38  ff.  is  probably  out  of  its  true  chronological  order.  The 
time  of  the  visit  is  likely  to  have  been  that  referred  to  in  Luke,  xix, 
29. 


282  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZAEETH 

his  spirit  profoundly.  Everything  indicated  that  this  was 
not  a  house  of  prayer,  but  a  house  of  slaughter.  He  had  in 
mind  a  prophetic  word  that  this  should  be  a  house  of  prayer 
for  all  nations,1  and  he  found  only  provisions  for  the  sacri- 
ficial cult.  He  was  shocked.  The  concentration  of  this 
cult  in  Jerusalem  had  made  it  possible  for  a  pious  Jew 
living  at  a  distance  from  the  city  to  commune  with  his  God 
without  giving  much  thought  to  the  animal  sacrifices.  In 
all  his  teaching  he  had  himself  but  rarely  referred  to  the 
matter,  and  then  only  to  indicate  the  greater  importance  of 
morality  justifying  even  disregard  for  the  legal  injunctions 
in  regard  to  sacrifices.2  Here  the  service  of  God  by  the 
slaughter  of  animals,  so  sharply  criticised  by  the  great 
prophets  of  the  past,  stared  him  in  the  eye  and  filled  his  soul 
with  loathing.  He  made  a  lash  and  began  to  drive  out  the 
money-changers  and  the  sellers  of  animals  for  sacrifice,  re- 
peating the  words,  "My  house  shall  be  called  a  house  of 
prayer/'  Apparently  he  also  predicted  the  destruction  of 
the  temple,  as  Jeremiah  had  done,  though  it  undoubtedly 
was  a  false  witness  who  claimed  that  he  had  threatened  to 
destroy  it  himself,  and  promised  to  build  it  up  in  three 
days,3  The  real  significance  of  the  event  lies  in  the  fact 
that,  like  the  great  prophets  before  the  exile,  he  had  at- 
tacked the  sacrificial  system  and  had  voiced  his  conviction 
that  religion  was  not  dependent  on  the  existence  of  the 
temple. 

The  hierarchy  had  been  touched  in  its  holiest  interests, 
and  Sadducees  called  him  to  account  and  sought  to  ensnare 
him  by  questions.4  By  what  authority  did  he  disturb  the 
peace  in  the  temple?  His  rejoinder  plainly  indicated  the 
answer.  It  was  the  prophet's  authority,  the  authority  of 
a  John  the  Baptist ;  and  this  they  did  not  dare  to  question 
because  the  people  held  the  prophet  of  the  desert  in  high 
honor.  As  they  supposed  him  to  share  the  opinions  of  the 

1  Isaiah,  Ivi,  7. 

*Matth.,  v,  24;  cf.  Matth.,  ix,  13,  xii,  7,  and  Mark,  xii,  28-34. 

8  Matih.,  xxvi,  61. 

*Matth.,  xxi,  23  ff.;  xxii,  23  ff.j  Marie,  xii,  18-27;  Luke,  xxi,  27-28. 


THE  LIFE  OF  JESUS  283 

Pharisees,  they  thought  they  might  find  a  vulnerable  point 
in  the  doctrine  of  the  resurrection  for  which  there  was  no 
authority  in  the  Law  or  the  Prophets.  Whose  wife  would  a 
woman  be  in  the  resurrection  who  had  had  seven  husbands  ? 
His  answer  showed  that  he  did  not  hold  the  common 
Pharisaic  view.  He  believed  that  those  who  were  accounted 
worthy  of  a  resurrection  were  raised  immediately  after 
death,  and  based  his  belief  upon  the  power  of  God,  and  ap- 
parently also  upon  his  love,  quoting  the  manner  in  which 
God  calls  himself  the  God  of  Abraham,  Isaac  and  Jacob, 
when  speaking  to  Moses  centuries  after  the  death  of  these 
men. 

It  was  a  dangerous  trap  that  was  set  for  him  by  the 
Pharisees  and  the  Herodians  by  their  question  whether  it 
was  lawful  to  pay  tribute  to  Caesar.1  A  negative  reply 
would  have  shown  that  he  favored  the  establishment  of  an 
independent  state.  If  he  had  desired  recognition  as  the 
king  of  Israel,  he  might  have  gained  sympathy  by  quoting 
prophetic  promises  of  independence.  But  his  answer  was 
unmistakably  in  the  affirmative.  It  was  right  to  render 
unto  Caesar  what  was  Caesar 's.  The  use  of  Caesar 's  money 
implied  the  recognition  of  Caesar's  civil  administration; 
the  acceptance  of  its  advantages  involved  the  assumption 
of  its  duties.  He  was  not  concerned  about  forming  a  new 
state  with  its  own  money.  He  was  anxious  that  the  duties 
toward  God  should  be  recognized.  When  God  received 
what  belonged  to  him,  his  kingdom  would  come.  This 
answer  shows  no  indifference  to  the  embodiment  of  righteous 
principles  in  the  social  life  of  man,  but  emphasis  on  what 
Jesus  regarded  as  its  only  sound  foundation. 

At  Bethany  Jesus  was  invited  to  the  house  of  a  Pharisee, 
who  may  have  been  called  "the  leper"  because  at  one  time 
afflicted  by  a  cutaneous  disease.2  A  woman  who  was  known 
as  a  '  *  sinner ' '  here  poured  oil  out  of  an  alabaster  cruse  over 

*Matth.,  xxii,  23-33;  Mark,  xii,  18-27;  Luke,  xx,  27-40. 

*Matth.,  xxvi,  6-13;  Mark,  xiv,  3-9;  Luke,  vii,  36-50.  In  earlier 
times,  as  to-day,  the  term  " leprosy"  covered  a  number  of  skin-dis- 
eases, some  of  them  curable. 


284  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZAEETH 

his  feet.  Simon  demurred  at  this  on  the  ground  that  Jesus 
must  have  known  what  kind  of  woman  she  was,  as  his 
disciples  afterwards  did  on  the  ground  that  the  contents 
might  have  been  sold  and  given  to  the  poor.  But  Jesus 
showed  Simon  how  he  failed  to  understand  the  woman's 
nature,  and  what  a  precious  foundation  for  a  reformed  char- 
acter such  a  love  as  hers  was.  A  later  tradition  made  of  her 
act,  by  a  forced  interpretation,  an  anticipatory  anointment 
for  his  burial,  a  thought  as  foreign  to  Jesus  as  to  the  woman. 
While  the  storm  of  opposition  grew,  and  leading  men  in 
both  the  great  parties  cast  about  how  to  accomplish  his  over- 
throw, Jesus  seems  to  have  conversed  with  people  during  the 
day  in  the  temple,  which  was  safer  than  any  other  place,  and 
to  have  retired  each  evening  either  to  his  friends  in  Bethany 
or  to  some  secluded  spot  in  the  neighborhood.  When  it  was 
possible  to  have  a  common  meal,  as  of  old  in  Galilee,  it  was 
a  festive  occasion.  Though  he  realized  the  gravity  of  the 
situation  and  was  prepared  for  the  worst,  Jesus  appears  to 
have  maintained  his  usual  attitude  of  chastened  joy  and  firm 
confidence.  It  was  afterwards  remembered  that  at  the  last 
meal  which  the  little  company  had  together,  he  had  spoken 
of  the  joy  with  which  they  would  eat  their  bread  and  drink 
their  wine  when  the  kingdom  of  heaven  should  come.1 
Twelve  years  ago  the  present  writer2  had  reached  the  con- 
viction that  Jesus  did  not  on  this  occasion,  institute  any 
ceremony  or  request  his  disciples  to  eat  and  drink  in  remem- 
brance of  him.  It  then  seemed  probable  that  in  celebrating 
the  paschal  meal,  he  had  with  his  accustomed  spontaneity 
and  freedom  exclaimed  when  he  saw  before  him  the  broken 
bread,  ("This  is)  my  body!"  and  as  he  looked  into  the  cup 
filled  with  red  wine,  ("This  is)  my  blood !"  Continued  re- 
flection on  the  elements  of  the  problem  has  forced  him  to 
accept  the  conclusions  of  Eichhorn3  and  other  scholars,  that 
even  this  remnant  must  be  given  up.  Jesus  does  not  seem 

1  Luke,  xxii,  18. 

2The  Significance  of  Christ's  Last  Meal  in  Journal  of  Biblical 
Literature,  1892,  p.  1  ff. 
8  Das  Altendmahl,  1899. 


THE  LIFE  OF  JESUS 


to  have  celebrated  the  paschal  meal.  He  was  probably  put 
to  death  by  the  Jewish  authorities  before  the  time  had  come 
for  eating  the  Passover.  All  the  eucharistic  formulas 
seem  to  represent  the  later  growth  of  the  Christian  institu- 
tion and  reflect  theological  speculation  on  the  significance 
of  the  death  of  Jesus.1 

There  is  every  reason  to  believe  that  Jesus  in  these  days 
more  than  once  sought  solitude  for  prayer  and  meditation. 
While  the  disciples  slept,  he  weighed  the  tremendous  issues 
of  his  cause  and  implored  divine  guidance.  It  is  not  neces- 
sary to  inquire  how  the  words  of  his  prayer  became  known. 
The  Church  knew  very  well  what  he  must  have  prayed  for, 
and  believed  that  angels  were  sent  to  comfort  him,2  without 
seeking  for  testimony  from  his  sleeping  disciples.  It  was 
a  long  time  before  Christological  considerations  would  have 
prevented  an  evangelist  from  putting  upon  the  lips  of  Jesus 
words  in  which  he  subordinated  his  will  to  God's. 

Jesus  was  arrested  in  the  garden  of  Gethsemane,3  so  called 
from  an  oil-cellar  in  the  place,  by  a  band  of  men  among 
whom  there  were  some  servants  of  the  high-priest,  and  taken 
to  the  palace  of  Caiaphas.  At  first  his  disciples  seem  to 
have  made  a  show  of  resistance.  At  least  one  of  them  drew 
a  sword  and  injured  a  servant  of  Caiaphas.  Jesus  told  him 
to  put  up  his  sword,  "for  he  that  taketh  to  the  sword  shall 
perish  by  the  sword. '  '4  He  was  true  to  the  last  to  his  doc- 
trine of  non-resistance.  One  of  the  followers  of  Jesus,  who 
for  some  reason  had  left  him  and  disappeared,  was  after- 
ward suspected  of  having  led  the  band  to  Gethsemane.  So 
many  legends  have  clustered  about  his  figure  that  it  is  quite 

1  In  the  large  building  called  En  Nabi  Daud  one  is  shown  the  room 
where  the  last  supper  took  place.  The  tradition  goes  back  to  the 
seventh  century.  Already  in  the  fourth  century  there  stood  on  this 
spot  a  Church  of  the  Apostles.  But  it  was  apparently  not  thought 
of  then  as  the  Coenaculum. 

2Matth.,  xxvi,  36-46;  MarTc,  xiv,  32-42;  Luke,  xxii,  39-46. 

•It  is  not  known  where  this  garden  was.  The  Franciscans  have 
one  Garden  of  Gethsemane,  the  Eussians  another.  Neither  can  be 
very  far  away  from  the  place  where  Jesus  was  arrested. 

4  Matth.,  xxvi,  51,  52. 


286  THE  PBOPHET  OF  NAZAEETH 

impossible  to  determine  what  part,  if  any,  he  had  in  helping 
the  men  to  find  Jesus.  We  have  no  reliable  data  from 
which  to  form  a  judgment  of  this  man.1 

Was  Jesus  tried  in  accordance  with  Jewish  law,  and  of 
what  crime  was  he  convicted?  It  has  been  repeatedly 
shown  that  the  trial  as  described  in  the  Gospels  is  out  of 
harmony  with  the  legal  procedure  prescribed  in  the  Mish- 
naic  tractate  Sanhedrin,  and  its  Talmudic  amplifications. 
The  highest  court  of  the  Jewish  people  could  not  convene 
in  the  night,  could  not  condemn  an  accused  person  on  the 
same  day  that  his  case  was  taken  up,  could  not  sit  on  the 
day  before  a  sabbath  or  the  day  before  a  festival,  could  not 
convict  without  the  concurrent  testimony  of  two  witnesses, 
could  not  deliver  a  verdict  without  a  majority  vote,  and  in 
the  case  of  blasphemy  could  not  condemn  unless  the  utter- 
ance in  question  was  a  plain  and  unmistakable  blasphemy. 
We  know  these  legal  principles  only  as  they  appear  in  the 
codification  of  E.  Jehudah  at  the  end  of  the  second  century, 
and  works  that  are  still  later.  In  the  main  they  were  no 
doubt  recognized  in  the  time  of  Jesus.  But  we  also  know 
that  many  provisions  in  the  interest  of  the  accused  were 
flagrantly  disregarded  by  the  Sadducean  party.  The  exam- 
ination during  the  night  in  the  house  of  Caiaphas  is  likely 
to  have  been  only  a  private  meeting.  Whether  Pharisees 
strongly  prejudiced  against  Jesus  would  have  made  an  ob- 
jection to  an  extraordinary  session  on  the  day  before  the 
sabbath,  or  would  have  insisted  upon  a  true  indictment,  suf- 
ficient testimony,  and  a  second  session,  is  doubtful,  since  the 
Sadducees  could  be  made  responsible  for  the  irregularities. 
In  the  light  of  the  historic  conditions  it  would  be  quite  un- 
warranted to  conclude,  as  some  have  done,  that  Jesus  cannot 
have  been  tried  at  all  by  the  supreme  court  of  Jewry,  seeing 
that  the  rules  laid  down  in  the  Mishna  were  manifestly  not 
followed. 

It  is  evident  that  the  high-priest  was  obliged  to  dismiss  as 
irrelevant  and  insufficient  any  testimony  offered  by  wit- 
nesses. The  charge  that  Jesus  had  seduced  men  into  idol- 

1  Qf .  Cheyne,  article  Judas  in  Encyclopaedia  BtyUca. 


THE  LIFE  OF  JESUS  287 

atry  was  clearly  not  made  at  all ;  it  was  at  a  much  later  time 
that  such  an  accusation  was  framed.  No  Jewish  court 
could  have  construed  the  prediction  of  the  coming  of  the 
Messiah,  or  even  the  claim  to  be  the  Messiah,  into  a  blas- 
phemy. What  occurred  at  the  private  meeting  of  the 
enemies  of  Jesus,  or  the  session  of  the  Sanhedrin,  can  only 
have  been  a  matter  of  conjecture  on  the  part  of  the  disciples 
of  Jesus.1  They  naturally  supposed  that  he  must  at  last 
have  been  asked  on  oath  whether  he  was  the  Messiah.  The 
remarkable  thing  is  that  the  earliest  tradition  on  this  point 
was  too  strongly  reminiscent  of  Jesus'  attitude  to  the  Mes- 
siahship  to  allow  him,  even  under  oath,  to  affirm  that  he 
was  the  Messiah2  and  Luke3  still  felt  that  he  must  have  pre- 
served his  incognito,  refusing  to  commit  himself,  and  merely 
hinting  at  the  future  fulfilment  of  Daniel's  prophecy. 
Only  Mark,4  writing  to  Gentiles  to  whom  the  term  Christ 
had  an  entirely  different  meaning,  made  him  admit  that  he 
was  the  Christ.  We  shall  probably  never  know  whether 
Jesus  maintained  throughout  a  dignified  silence,  or,  stung  to 
the  quick  by  unjust  charges  and  imputations,  bore  witness 
once  more,  in  burning  words,  to  the  faith  that  was  within 
him.  Whether  he  was  silent  or  spoke,  his  doom  was  decided 
upon  beforehand. 

1 1  We  have  a  law,  and  according  to  that  law  he  shall  die. '  '5 
This  was  substantially  the  message  of  Caiaphas  to  Pilate. 
The  Koman  procurator  would  fain  set  him  free.  But  the 
highest  representatives  of  this  subject  people  proclaimed  that 
he  was  an  insurgent,  a  pretender  to  the  throne,  a  politically 

*A  consciousness  of  this  lack  of  testimony  may  have  led  to  the 
statement  that  Peter  entered  in  to  see  the  end,  Matth.,  xxvi,  58,  but 
the  story  that  Peter  denied  his  master  where  he  was  sitting  t(  without 
in  the  court,"  vs.  69,  shows  that  no  emphasis  was  put  upon  Peter's 
nearness  to  the  scene  as  verifying  the  account. 

2  XXVI,  64. 

8  XXII,  67-70. 

4  XIV,  62. 

6  John,  xix,  7.  The  correctness  of  the  words  cannot  be  vouched  for, 
and  the  addition  "because  he  made  himself  the  Son  of  God"  reveals 
the  later  standpoint  of  the  evangelist. 


288  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZABETH 

dangerous  character,  whom  he  could  not  allow  at  large  and 
remain  a  friend  and  trusted  servant  of  the  emperor.  Pilate 
understood  well  enough  the  nature  of  this  extraordinary 
anxiety  about  the  welfare  of  Tiberius  and  the  integrity  of 
the  empire.  He  would  have  been  amused  at  their  simulated 
fear  lest  the  Koman  yoke  should  be  broken  and  Judaea  be- 
come independent,  had  he  not  been  so  strongly  impressed  by 
the  personality  of  this  latest  victim  of  their  religious  intoler- 
ance. Political  considerations,  however,  forced  him  to  fol- 
low the  usual  Roman  method  of  not  interfering  with  the 
laws  of  the  subject  nations.  The  Jews  did  not  possess  the 
' '  right  of  the  sword. ' '  They  must  obtain  permission  of  the 
procurator  before  they  could  inflict  the  death  penalty. 
Pilate  finally  "handed  him  over  to  them  to  be  crucified.'11 
And  they  crucified  him.  Our  earliest  witness  to  the  text  of 
the  Gospels,  the  Sinaitic  Syriac  version,  renders  it  certain 
that  the  execution  was  not  done  by  Roman  soldiers,  but  by 
the  Jewish  authorities.2  How  far  he  was  subjected  to  per- 
sonal indignities,  is  difficult  to  say.  He  certainly  was  not 
scourged  by  Pilate,  and  probably  not  by  the  Jews.3  The 
mock-coronation  may  also  be  a  later  feature  brought  into 
the  story  by  persons  familiar  with  the  widespread  custom 
of  crowning  a  criminal  as  mock-king  for  some  time  previous 
to  his  crucifixion  at  the  end  of  the  year.4  But  the  Jews 
who  crucified  him  divided  between  themselves  his  garments, 
and  as  they  sat  and  observed  his  end  they  wrote  in  derision 
on  his  cross  in  Aramaic  "king  of  the  Jews/'5  Before  the 
crucifixion  they  had,  according  to  Jewish  custom,  offered 
him  wine  mixed  with  myrrh,6  in  order  to  relieve  his  suffer- 

1  Luke's  account  of  Pilate's  sending  Jesus  to  Herod  (xxiii,  6  ff.)  is 
subject  to  grave  doubts,  and  is  probably  unhistorical. 

2  It  is  the  merit  of  Merx  to  have  called  attention  to  this  fact,  Das 
Evangelium  Matthaeus,  1902,  p.  416  ff. 

8  See  Merx,  I.  c.,  p.  408  ff. 

4  See  J.  G.  Frazer,  The  Golden  Bough,  1900,  II,  171  ff.;  Ill,  138  ff. 

6  So  the  altogether  credible  narrative  in  the  Sinaitic  Syriac  version 
of  Matthew. 

eMatth.,  xxvii,  34.  The  Sinaitic  Syriac  has  wine,  not  vinegar.  This 
is  probable.  It  has  gallj  this  is  likely  to  be  a  mistake  for  an  earlier 
myrrh. 


THE  LIFE  OF  JESUS  289 

ings,  and  rob  him  of  consciousness.  It  has  generally  been 
taken  for  granted  that  Jesus  must  have  been  crucified  by 
the  Romans,  on  the  ground  that  crucifixion  was  a  peculiar 
Roman  punishment  not  prescribed  in  the  Jewish  law.  It 
must  be  remembered,  however,  that  impalement  or  hanging 
in  some  form  was  exceedingly  common  among  the  Semitic 
nations,  that  the  Deuteronomic  law  (xxi,  22)  mentions 
hanging  on  a  tree  as  a  penalty  which  Paul  regards  as  equiv- 
alent to  crucifixion,  that  the  Jews  adopted  such  Roman  pun- 
ishments as  death  by  the  sword  not  prescribed  in  the  law, 
that  already  Alexander  Jannaeus  had  adopted  crucifixion 
as  well,  as  he  crucified  eight  hundred  Jewish  rebels  in  the 
midst  of  the  city,1  and  that  there  were  good  reasons  why  this 
form  of  punishment  used  by  the  Sadducean  rulers  should 
have  been  abolished  in  the  later  penal  codes.  It  should  not 
be  necessary  to  emphasize  to-day  that  the  condemnation 
and  execution  of  Jesus  by  Jewish  authorities,  with  permis- 
sion of  the  Roman  procurator,  furnishes  no  justification  for 
the  age-long  persecution  of  Jews  by  Christians.  There  is 
no  nation  whose  conservatives  have  not  waged  war  upon 
such  radicals  as  Jesus,  or  whose  prophets  have  not  known 
the  fellowship  of  his  sufferings. 

Tradition  ascribed  to  Jesus  several  utterances  on  the 
cross.  Matthew  and  Mark  have  only  the  improbable  quota- 
tion of  the  twenty-second  Psalm.2  Luke3  substituted  for 
the  cry  of  God-forsakenness  another  word  from  the 
Psalter,4  "Into  thy  hands  I  commit  my  spirit"  and  also 
added  the  beautiful  prayer,5  "Father,  forgive  them,  for 
they  know  not  what  they  do, ' '  as  well  as  the  promise  to  the 
robber,6  "To-day  thou  shalt  be  with  me  in  Paradise. "  The 
Fourth  Evangelist  went  his  own  ways.  Placing  the  beloved 
disciple  and  the  mother  beneath  the  cross,  he  had  a  word 

1  Josephus,  Bellum  judaicum,  I,  97  f. 
*  Matth.,  xxvii,  46 ;  Marie,  xv,  34. 
•XXIII,  46. 
4  Ps.,  xxxi,  6, 
6  XXIII,  34. 
•XXIII,  43. 
19 


290  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZAEETH 

for  each.  He  made  him  exclaim, ' '  I  thirst, ' ?1  and  the  part- 
ing word  was  the  statement  by  the  incarnate  Logos  who  in 
his  person  had  revealed  God,  "It  is  finished."2  Historical 
is  the  inarticulate  cry  of  anguish  with  which  he  gave  up 
the  ghost,  heard  by  the  women  who  stood  afar  off.  The 
Gospels  narrate  that  he  was  buried  in  the  tomb  of  Joseph  of 
Arimathaea,  a  rich  man  who  had  secretly  been  a  disciple  of 
Jesus.3  It  is  natural  to  suppose  that  this  feature  owes  its 
origin  to  the  prophecy  in  Isa.  liii,  9  "They  made  his  grave 
with  the  wicked,  and  with  the  rich  in  his  death."  But  it 
may  also  be  that  the  body  was  buried,  on  account  of  the  fes- 
tival, in  a  plot  of  ground  said  to  have  belonged  to  this 
man.4 

1John,  xix,  28. 

2  XIX,  30. 

*Matth.,  xxvii,  57  ff.;  Mark,  xv,  42  ff.;  Luke,  xxiii,  50  ff.;  John, 
xix,  38  ff. 

4  It  is  not  known  where  Jesus  was  crucified  and  in  what  spot  his 
body  was  laid  when  taken  from  the  cross.  The  gospels  call  the  place 
of  execution  Golgotha  (Gu(l)gulta,  Kranion,  Calvaria),  or  the  Place 
of  the  Skull,  and  declare  that  it  was  near  the  city.  This  only  shows 
that  the  spot  must  be  sought  outside  of  the  walls  enclosing  the  city  in 
his  time.  The  oldest  tradition  is  attached  to  the  Church  of  the  Holy 
Sepulchre.  It  goes  back  to  Constantine,  who,  in  removing  a  temple  of 
Venus  and  laying  the  foundations  of  a  Christian  basilica,  unexpectedly 
came  upon  a  cave  or  tomb  (Eusebius,  Vita  Constantini,  iii,  25).  We 
are  not  informed  on  what  grounds  it  was  identified  as  the  tomb  of 
Jesus.  After  a  starting-point  had  thus  been  found,  it  was  not  diffi- 
cult to  discover  all  the  other  sacred  sites  that  now  group  themselves 
about  this  shrine.  The  main  objection  urged  against  this  tradition 
has  been  removed  by  the  excavations  and  researches  of  Schick  and 
Clermont  Ganneau,  which  have  tended  to  prove  that  the  second  wall 
ran  south  of  the  Church  of  the  Holy  Sepulchre  and  that  Jewish  tombs 
actually  exist  within  this  enclosure,  near  the  Jacobite  Chapel  and  in 
the  house  of  the  Coptic  Bishop.  The  present  writer  has  been  told  by 
priests  that  there  are  other  tombs  below  the  so-called  tombs  of  Joseph 
of  Arimathaea  and  Nicodemus,  but  has  not  been  able  to  verify  these 
statements  in  spite  of  repeated  attempts.  The  presence  of  these 
tombs  is  not  altogether  favorable  to  the  tradition,  since  it  raises  the 
question  whether  it  is  likely  that  such  a  resting-place  for  the  dead 
could  have  been  chosen  for  an  execution.  In  recent  times,  Thenius, 
Gordon,  Conder  and  others  have  suggested  as  a  possible  site  the  knoll 


THE  LIFE  OF  JESUS  291 

It  is  quite  impossible  to  determine  when  the  death  of 
Jesus  occurred.  The  Synoptists  seem  to  have  regarded  his 
ministry  as  occupying  one  year.  But  they  were  palpably 
influenced  by  the  prophecy  of  "the  acceptable  year  of  the 
Lord ; ' n  and  it  is  difficult  to  escape  the  impression  that  they 
have  recorded  events  that  must  have  occupied  considerably 
more  time.  On  the  other  hand,  the  Fourth  Gospel  has  gen- 
erally been  understood  as  stretching  out  his  ministry 
through  three  years.  This,  however,  is  not  certain,  as  the 
festivals  recorded  may  be  only  those  of  one  year,  beginning 
with  one  passover  and  ending  before  the  other.  It  appears 
probable  that  the  official  career  of  Jesus  lasted  more  than  a 
year,  though  it  cannot  be  decided  with  our  present  data 
how  long  it  was.  There  have  been  many  attempts  to  de- 
termine the  date  of  his  death  by  the  Jewish  calendar  or 
astronomically,  but  none  are  convincing.  That  Jesus  died 
on  a  Friday,  and  that  this  Friday  was  the  14th  of  Nisan,  is 
probable.  All  evangelists  agree  that  it  was  on  the  eve  of 
the  sabbath.  The  gospels  according  to  John  and  Peter 
make  this  Friday  the  day  when  the  paschal  meal  was  eaten ; 
the  Synoptic  gospels  make  it  the  day  following  that  when 
the  Passover  was  celebrated.2  The  second  representation 
may  have  been  as  strongly  influenced  by  the  idea  that  Jesus 
must  have  eaten  the  paschal  meal,  as  the  former  was  by  the 
idea  that  he  was  put  to  death  on  the  day  when  the  paschal 
lamb  was  slain.  Intrinsically,  it  is  most  probable  that  the 
authorities  were  anxious  to  have  this  work  done  before  the 

above  "Jeremiah's  Grotto/ '  northeast  of  the  Damascus  Gate,  urging 
in  favor  of  this  theory  that  the  present  north  wall  was  the  second 
wall  of  the  city,  that  the  place  has  the  appearance  of  a  skull,  and  that, 
according  to  a  Jewish  tradition,  it  was  the  place  of  stoning.  But  the 
first  of  these  arguments  can  no  longer  be  maintained;  it  is  by  no 
means  certain  that  the  name  was  derived  from  the  configuration  of  the 
hill,  and  quite  doubtful  whether,  even  before  a  part  of  it  was  blasted 
away,  it  had  any  real  resemblance  to  a  skull ;  and  the  Jewish  tradition 
is  modern.  Others  have  suggested  other  hills  north  of  the  city.  The 
question  cannot  be  settled  in  the  present  state  of  our  knowledge. 

1  Isaiah,  Ixi,  2. 

2  See  Schmidt,  The  Significance  of  Christ 's  Last  Meal,  in  Journal  of 
Biblical  Literature,  1892,  p.  1  ff. 


292  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZAEETH 

festivities  began.  If  the  Jews  of  the  period  had  arranged 
their  festive  calendar  by  the  astronomical  new  moon,  it 
would  be  a  comparatively  easy  matter  to  find  in  what  year, 
during  the  procuratorship  of  Pilate,  the  14th  Nisan  fell  on 
a  Friday.  But  they  seem  to  have  determined  the  appear- 
ance of  the  new  moon  by  ocular  observation  dependent  on 
the  weather.  In  addition  the  system  of  intercalary  months 
is  not  sufficiently  known  to  enable  us  to  decide  in  which  of 
these  years  a  thirteenth  month  was  introduced.  It,  there- 
fore, seems  hopeless  to  settle  the  question.  Ginzel1  has 
again  called  attention  to  the  fact  that  of  the  nine  lunar 
eclipses  that  occurred  between  29  and  33  A.  D.  only  the  par- 
tial eclipse  on  April  3d,  33,  was  visible  in  Jerusalem.  While 
an  eclipse  of  the  moon  on  the  day  when  Jesus  died  may  have 
given  rise  to  the  story  of  a  great  darkness  covering  the 
whole  land  for  three  hours,  it  is  not  safe  to  draw  any  con- 
clusions from  this  bare  possibility.  He  must  have  died 
before  the  end  of  36  A.  D.,  the  last  year  of  Pilate 's  admin- 
istration. If  he  was  born  about  6  B.  C.  and  began  his  min- 
istry in  29  A.  D.,  he  may  not  have  reached  his  fortieth  year, 
when,  misunderstood  and  abandoned  by  his  disciples,  dis- 
trusted and  feared  by  the  common  people  whose  cause  he 
had  espoused,  scorned  and  hated  by  the  representatives  of 
every  popular  form  of  religion,  and  condemned  as  a  blas- 
phemer by  the  highest  court  of  his  nation,  he  paid  the 
penalty  for  spiritual  independence  by  a  cruel  and  ignomin- 
ious death. 

1  Spezieller  Kanon  der  Sonnen  wd  Mondfinsternisse,  1899,  p.  200. 


CHAPTER  XI 

THE  TEACHING  OF  JESUS 

It  is  a  significant  fact  that  none  of  the  historic  creeds  of 
Christendom  devotes  any  attention  to  the  great  ideas  that 
occupied  the  mind  of  Jesus.  The  framers  of  these  vener- 
able statements  of  Christian  belief  were  deeply  concerned 
about  philosophical  questions,  important  in  their  way, 
which  were  wholly  foreign  to  the  thought  of  Jesus,  and 
laid  heavy  stress  upon  theological  notions  that  had  re- 
ceived no  emphasis  in  his  teaching.  Their  thoughts  were 
not  like  his  thoughts.  The  so-called  Apostles'  Creed  be- 
gins by  affirming  the  faith  of  the  Church  in  "God  the 
Father,  Almighty,  Maker  of  heaven  and  earth. "  This 
"God  the  Father"  is  not  the  Heavenly  Father  whose  im- 
partial love  for  all  his  children,  the  sons  of  men,  Jesus 
proclaimed;  it  is  the  first  of  three  divine  persons,  whose 
distinction  from  "his  Son"  lies  in  his  being  the  source  of 
all  creation.  Jesus  no  doubt  believed  that  God  had 
created  heaven  and  earth,  but  that  was  not  his  message 
to  men.  Concerning  himself  the  Creed  goes  on  to  affirm 
that  he  was  the  "only  begotten  Son,"  "conceived  by  the 
Holy  Ghost,"  and  "born  of  the  Virgin  Mary,"  ideas 
never  expressed  by  him,  and  probably  altogether  unin- 
telligible to  him.  Concerning  his  manner  of  life,  his  spirit, 
his  convictions  on  moral  and  religious  questions,  his  con- 
flict with  popular  Judaism,  his  work  as  a  physician  and  as 
a  reformer,  the  words  and  deeds  by  which  he  exercised  his 
influence  upon  the  world,  this  creed  has  nothing  to  Bay. 
It  passes  by  his  life  to  dwell  upon  his  death,  descent  to 
hell,  resurrection,  ascension,  and  expected  return  to  judge 
the  quick  and  the  dead.  There  is  not  the  slightest  hint  in 
the  Synoptic  Gospels  that  Jesus  ever  spoke  about  descend- 

293 


294  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZAEETH 

ing  to  hell  or  ascending  to  heaven,  and  it  is  recognized 
by  critical  students  that  there  is  not  sufficient  evidence  to 
warrant  the  assumption  that  he  prophesied  his  resurrec- 
tion on  the  third  day  and  his  return  as  a  judge.  Jesus  no 
doubt  believed  that  a  holy  spirit  was  sent  out  by  God 
through  which  prophets  spoke  and  wrought  mighty  deeds ; 
but  it  is  quite  certain  that  he  had  never  heard  of  "the 
Holy  Ghost,"  the  third  person  of  the  Trinity.  He  prob- 
ably neither  hoped  for  nor  feared  the  development  of  a 
"Holy  Catholic  Church. "  "The  communion  of  the 
saints,"  which  originally  meant  the  worship  of  the  de- 
parted saints,  though  not  unknown  among  Hellenistic 
Jews,  is  never  mentioned  by  Jesus,  and  is  not  likely  to 
have  been  practiced  by  him.  There  are  unmistakable 
indications  that  he  did  not  believe  in  a  general  resurrec- 
tion on  the  last  day,  or  in  a  restoration  of  the  flesh.  The 
later  creeds,  Catholic  or  Protestant,  whether  dealing  with 
the  Trinity,  the  person,  natures,  will  and  work  of  Christ, 
the  eternal  decrees,  the  plan  of  salvation,  or  the  perdition 
sure  to  overtake  all  unbelievers,  are  equally  silent  on  the 
moral  and  religious  issues  that  caused  him  to  raise  his 
voice,  and  still  more  explicit  in  the  statement  of  doctrines 
unknown  to  him,  or  disapproved  by  him. 

To  some  extent  the  New  Testament  is  itself  responsible 
for  this  shifting  of  the  interest  from  the  message  to  the 
messenger,  from  the  ethical  to  the  metaphysical.  Already 
in  the  Synoptics,  but  especially  in  the  Fourth  Gospel  and 
the  Epistles,  the  personality  of  Jesus  has  become  the  ob- 
ject of  a  reverent  speculation  that  crowds  his  teaching 
into  the  background.  A  reader  not  accustomed  to  com- 
pare texts,  eliminate  interpolations,  sift  evidence,  or  test 
the  value  of  translations,  might  readily  gain  the  impres- 
sion from  late  additions  to  the  Synoptic  gospels,  or  early 
misinterpretations  by  the  authors  of  these  works,  that 
Jesus  on  some  occasions  placed  himself  far  above  his 
fellow-men,  and  demanded  of  them  the  obedience  of  slaves 
to  their  master,  or  of  subjects  to  their  king.  The  eccle- 
siastical tradition  that  made  the  Fourth  Gospel  a  work 


THE  TEACHING  OF  JESUS  295 

of  the  apostle  John  almost  inevitably  led  persons  who 
failed  to  observe  or  appreciate  its  marked  contrast  with 
the  Synoptic  representation  to  the  conviction  that  Jesus 
directed  attention  to  himself,  and  declared  it  essential  to 
salvation  to  have  a  knowledge  of  his  personality.  The 
Pauline  literature  completely  ignored  the  earthly  life  and 
the  teaching  of  Jesus,  finding  the  power  of  salvation  in 
the  mystic  union  between  the  believer  and  that  celestial 
being  who,  though  crucified,  was  the  Christ,  and  had 
been  proclaimed  as  such  by  resurrection  from  the  dead. 
The  influence  for  good  that  found  its  way  through  this 
doctrinal  development,  begun  in  the  New  Testament  and 
continued  in  the  period  of  the  crystallization  of  dogma, 
admits  of  no  question.  But  as  the  mythical  and  leg- 
endary conceptions  that  once  were  so  necessary  and  use- 
ful loose  their  hold  upon  men,  interest  returns  with  in- 
creased momentum  to  the  actual  thought  of  Jesus. 

The  teaching  of  Jesus  revolved  about  two  focal  points : 
the  Kingdom  of  Heaven,  and  the  Father  in  Heaven.  He 
never  seems  to  have  given  a  definition  of  the  kingdom  of 
heaven,  and  his  conception  can  only  be  inferred  from  the 
manner  in  which  he  speaks  of  it  in  parables  and  detached 
sayings,  and  the  relation  it  seems  to  have  had  to  his  gen- 
eral teaching  on  moral  questions.  An  additional  diffi- 
culty arises  from  the  fact  that  there  often  is  much  uncer- 
tainty as  to  the  accuracy  and  even  the  meaning  of  the 
Greek  translations  of  his  sayings.  Hence  some  of  the 
most  fundamental  questions  are  still  under  debate.  Did 
he  conceive  of  the  kingdom  of  heaven  as  belonging  to  the 
future,  or  as  a  present  reality?  Did  he  regard  it  as  an 
institution  existing  in  heaven,  or  one  to  be  established 
on  the  earth  ?  Did  he  use  the  term  to  designate  an  organ- 
ized state,  or  a  dominating  influence?  Did  he  look  for 
its  establishment  suddenly  and  miraculously,  or  expect  its 
coming  gradually  by  the  spread  of  the  truth  and  the 
growth  of  righteousness?  Though  these  questions  are 
closely  allied,  the  answer  to  one  does  not  necessarily  de- 
termine the  replies  to  the  others,  and  though  the  alterna- 


296  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZAKETH 

lives  are  sharply  marked,  the  acceptance  of  one  does  not 
necessarily  preclude  the  recognition  of  a  certain  element 
of  truth  in  the  other.  Thus  the  interpreter  who  realizes 
that  the  kingdom  of  heaven  is  likely  to  be  an  eschatolog- 
ical  magnitude  is  naturally  inclined  to  view  it  as  a  world- 
empire  to  be  established  on  earth  suddenly  and  miracu- 
lously by  the  power  of  God.  On  the  other  hand,  the 
scholar  who  recognizes  the  inevitable  retouching  of  any 
words  of  Jesus  on  this  subject  in  view  of  the  current  apoc- 
alyptic ideas,  and  deems  it  probable  that  the  kingdom  of 
heaven  was  to  Jesus  a  present  reality,  is  easily  led  to  the 
opinion  that  the  Galilean  prophet  only  looked  forward  to 
the  gradual  recognition  among  men  of  his  doctrine,  and 
the  increasing  harmony  of  earth's  life  with  the  conditions 
prevailing  in  heaven. 

But  the  ideal  that  presented  itself  to  Jesus  may  have 
been  recognized  by  him  as  essentially  belonging  to  the 
future,  and  yet  in  process  of  realization  in  his  own  time. 
He  may  have  regarded  it  as  existing,  not  only  in  the 
thought  and  purpose  of  God,  but  in  the  heavenly  society 
of  angels  and  men  accounted  worthy  of  being  raised  from 
the  dead  to  an  angel-like  existence,  and  yet  to  be  destined 
also  to  appear  among  men  on  earth.  He  may  have  ex- 
pected the  kingdom  of  heaven  in  its  full-grown  power  to 
be  a  social  organization  taking  the  place  of  the  kingdoms 
founded  by  men  on  principles  which  he  condemned,  and 
yet  have  looked  upon  the  dominating  influence  of  God  in 
the  lives  of  individual  men  as  an  evidence  of  its  presence 
in  the  world,  and  an  earnest  of  its  complete  manifestation. 
And  he  may  have  wistfully  gazed  into  the  future  for  signs 
of  some  impending  judgment  on  his  people,  some  great 
political  revolution,  some  mighty  upheaval  among  the 
nations,  ushering  in  tremendous  changes  in  the  life  of 
man,  and  may  have  firmly  believed,  as  did  the  prophets 
before  him,  that  such  sudden,  awe-inspiring  and  marvel- 
ous events  were  the  work  of  God  bringing  about  his  own 
holy  purposes,  without  committing  himself  on  this  account 
to  the  view  that  the  world  was  coming  to  an  end,  and  that 


THE  TEACHING  OF  JESUS  297 

God  would  by  a  miracle  cause  a  new  world  to  spring  into 
existence,  with  new  conditions  wholly  unrelated  to  the 
old  ones.  The  a  priori  notion  that  he  must  have  given  to 
this  term  the  meaning  likely  to  have  been  attached  to  it 
in  circles  affected  by  apocalyptic  writings  is  as  unwar- 
ranted as  the  a  priori  notion  that,  when  he  used  it,  he  must 
have  had  in  mind  either  heaven  above  or  the  Church 
below. 

It  is  clearly  necessary  to  examine  philologically  the  term 
that  Jesus  is  likely  to  have  employed,  and  to  take  note  of 
its  meaning  in  the  Jewish  literature  of  the  period ;  but  the 
manner  in  which  he  used  it  himself,  as  shown  by  a  critic- 
ally investigated  text,  is  alone  decisive.  The  Aramaic 
malkut  dishemayya  means  "the  reign  of  heaven."  As 
"heaven"  was  an  exceedingly  common  substitute  for 
"God"  at  a  time  when  the  Jews  avoided  the  use  of  any 
divine  name,  the  term  is  equivalent  to  "reign  of  God," 
as  it  was  also  understood  by  the  later  evangelists.  There 
is  no  clear  instance  where  malkut  means  "kingdom"  in 
the  sense  of  a  geographical  "realm"  or  "territory."  or 
of  a  "body  politic"  viewed  from  the  standpoint  of  the 
citizens  composing  it.  But  it  is  sometimes  used  more  ab- 
stractly for  "reign,"  "regime,"  "royal  power,"  some- 
times more  concretely  for  "government,"  "monarchy," 
"empire."  Thus  the  Eoman  empire  is  often  referred  to 
as  malkuta.  In  the  book  of  Daniel  the  term  denotes  the 
world-empire  which  passes  from  the  Chaldaeans  to  the 
Medes,  the  Persians,  the  Greeks,  and  finally  the  Jews. 
Something  more  than  the  supreme  authority  over  the  na- 
tions is  suggested.  The  expectation  is  of  an  organized 
Jewish  empire  in  the  form  of  a  theocracy.  The  term 
"theocracy,"  employed  by  Josephus  to  describe  the  po- 
litical organization  of  the  Jewish  commonwealth,  is  prob- 
ably a  translation  of  malkut  dishemayya.  Dalman1  has 
adduced  ample  evidence  from  Jewish  literature  of  the 
use  of  this  term  to  designate  the  present  authority  of  God 
over  the  lives  of  men.  It  is  a  question,  however,  whether 

*Die  Worte  Jesu,  1898,  p.  75  ff. 


298  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZAEETH 

the  great  bulk  of  his  proof -texts,  quoted  from  works  later 
than  the  fall  of  Jerusalem  and  the  dispersion  of  the  peo- 
ple, may  not  represent  a  modification  of  the  earlier  con- 
ception. It  would  be  in  harmony  with  the  general  de- 
velopment of  Israel's  religious  life,  if  the  eschatological 
and  political  character  of  the  kingdom  of  heaven,  still  so 
marked  in  the  book  of  Daniel,  should  have  gradually  given 
place  to  a  more  spiritual  conception,  emphasizing  the 
present  rule  of  the  divine  law-giver.  In  the  time  of  Jesus 
both  of  these  ideas  may  have  been  suggested  by  the 
expression. 

There  can  be  no  manner  of  doubt  that  to  the  mind  of 
Jesus  the  kingdom  of  heaven  was  in  a  large  measure  a  fact 
belonging  to  the  future.  Jesus  was  a  prophet.  His  eyes 
were  eagerly  looking  for  the  things  that  were  to  come. 
This  was  no  mere  idle  speculation.  Present  conditions 
did  not  satisfy  him.  He  could  not  believe  in  the  Heavenly 
Father  without  believing  with  all  his  heart  that  he  had 
better  things  in  store  for  men.  He  watched  with  pro- 
found interest  the  signs  of  the  times,  and  deemed  it  the 
duty  of  all  men  to  do  so.  It  was  a  vital  question  with 
him  what  God  was  going  to  do  in  the  world.  The  more 
painfully  he  was  affected  by  the  hunger  and  nakedness, 
the  physical  ailments  and  mental  diseases,  the  ignorance 
and  servitude,  the  worry  and  want  of  faith,  the  hatred, 
lust  and  greed  of  men,  the  more  ardently  he  hoped  for  a 
better  state  of  things,  and  the  more  earnestly  he  searched 
for  the  disposition  of  heart  and  the  principles  of  conduct 
that  would  prevail  in  an  ideal  society.  To  find  this  ideal 
and  to  hold  it  against  the  world  appeared  to  him  the  most 
commanding  duty  and  the  highest  privilege.  The  kingdom 
of  heaven  was  to  him  the  summum  bonum.  It  was  worth 
the  while  to  live  and  suffer  and  die  for  it.  Hence  his  first 
recorded  utterance1  and  his  last2  referred  to  its  coming. 
Hence  he  called  those  blessed  who  would  see  it.  Hence 
he  proclaimed  its  advent  as  good  news  to  the  poor,  the  suf- 

1  Matth.,  iv,  17. 

2  Luke,  xxii,  18. 


THE  TEACHING  OF  JESUS  299 

fering,  the  socially  ostracized.  Hence  he  described,  in 
matchless  parables,  its  supreme  worth  and  the  joy  of  seek- 
ing and  striving  for  it.  He  made  it  perfectly  clear  that 
the  coming  of  the  kingdom  of  heaven  would  mean  a  judg- 
ment on  all  that  was  high  and  exalted  among  men,  all  that 
was  artificial  and  untrue,  all  that  was  built  on  the  sand; 
but  his  moral  earnestness  did  not  exhaust  itself  in  a  cry 
of  doom,  as  the  prophetic  messages  of  Amos  and  Hosea, 
Isaiah,  Jeremiah  and  John  the  Baptist  had.  His  was  the 
voice  of  one  crying  in  the  wilderness:  " Comfort  ye  my 
people ;  prepare  ye  a  highway  for  the  Lord ! ' ' 

With  all  this,  Jesus  did  not  picture  in  detail  the  ideal 
that  stood  before  him.  He  did  not  describe  the  fertility 
of  the  soil,  the  clothing  of  the  wilderness  with  all  man- 
ner of  trees,  the  plenty  of  oil  and  corn  and  must,  the  joy 
of  sitting  under  one's  own  vine  and  fig-tree,  the  freedom 
from  political  oppression,  the  submission  of  the  Gentiles  to 
the  yoke  of  the  Law,  the  passing  of  the  empire  to  the  peo- 
ple of  the  Most  High,  as  post-exilic  prophets  had  done. 
Some  of  these  things  he  did  not  expect,  and  some  he  did 
not  consider  it  worth  the  while  to  dwell  upon.  There 
were  other  things,  and  far  more  important,  that  fas- 
cinated him  in  his  view  of  the  future,  and  these  he  pro- 
claimed with  no  uncertain  sound.  It  was  the  righteous 
life  of  the  new  social  order  that  attracted  him.  The  man 
who  spent  so  much  of  his  time  in  healing  the  sick,  reliev- 
ing the  needy,  and  bringing  the  joy  of  fellowship  to  the 
outcast  was  not  indifferent  to  the  physical  environment 
and  the  social  conditions.  But  he  realized  that,  if  men 
would  first  seek  the  kingdom  of  God  and  its  righteousness, 
all  these  things  would  be  added  unto  them.1  It  was  his  con- 
viction that  the  reign  of  God  would  produce  a  higher  type 
of  righteousness,  and  that  this  would  produce  a  good  and 
desirable  life  for  man  on  the  earth.  In  thus  seeking  for 
righteousness  above  everything  else  and  in  holding  up 
his  own  ideal  of  righteousness  against  the  views  prevail- 
ing in  his  social  milieu,  he  was  the  son  of  the  prophets 

1Matth.,  vi,  33;  Luke,  xii,  31. 


300  THE  PROPHET  OF  NAZAKETH 

whose  denunciation  of  wrong-doing  had  made  them  the 
spiritual  factors  in  the  nation's  life,  and  a  true  son  of 
Israel  whose  sense  of  duty  had  produced  such  a  prophetic 
order. 

His  ideal  of  righteousness  differed  in  several  respects 
from  that  prevalent  among  men  who  were  generally  re- 
garded as  paragons  of  piety  and  exemplars  of  virtue  in 
Israel.  Most  important  was  his  contention  that  a  truly 
righteous  character  was  not  the  sum  of  outward  acts  re- 
garded as  righteous.  On  the  contrary,  it  was  the  right- 
eous disposition  that  made  the  act  valuable.  "Make  the 
tree  good,  and  its  fruits  will  be  good."1  "If  the  fountain 
is  good,  all  the  water  that  flows  from  it  will  be  sweet." 
The  important  thing  to  Jesus  was  that  a  man  should  be 
moved  inwardly  by  love  of  God  and  love  of  fellow-man. 
From  this  correct  inner  attitude  of  mind  would  then  radi- 
ate the  words  and  deeds  and  helpful  influences  of  a  good 
life.  The  demand  for  such  a  righteous  inner  disposition 
was  not  new  either  in  Israel  or  in  the  world.  Among  the 
introspective  Hindus  and  the  clear  thinking  Greeks  it  had 
often  been  expressed ;  it  was  emphasized  in  the  widespread 
philosophy  of  the  Stoics ;  in  later  Jewish  literature  it  had 
found  increasing  recognition.  But  in  the  thought  of 
Jesus  it  dominated  in  a  peculiar  manner,  and  led  to  a 
break  with  the  established  forms  of  religion  at  a  point 
where  it  could  become  of  epoch-making  significance  for 
the  Western  world.  If  conformity  to  an  external  stand- 
ard, obedience  in  outward  form  to  the  rules  laid  down 
in  the  Law,  or  by  competent  authority  interpreting  the 
Law,  was  not  to  constitute  an  act  as  good,  but  the  char- 
acter of  the  act  was  to  be  determined  by  the  inner  dis- 
position, the  knowledge  of  what  is  true  and  right  must 
likewise  be  derived,  not  from  an  external  authority,  but 
from  the  inner  light.  Jesus  accepted  this  consequence, 
and  insisted  that  the  inner  eye  must  be  sound  and  respon- 
sive to  the  direct  illumination  of  the  divine,  that  men  must 

.,  vii,  17  ff.;  Luke,  vi,  43  ff. 


THE  TEACHING  OF  JESUS  301 

judge  of  themselves  what  is  right.1  It  was  by  heroically 
throwing  himself  upon  this  inner  source  and  sanction  of 
truth  that  Jesus  gained  his  marvelous  confidence,  and  was 
led  to  an  open  breach  with  the  current  ethico-religious 
ideal  as  it  expressed  itself  in  overt  acts. 

The  common  idea  of  his  time,  based  on  the  law  and 
the  natural  inferences  from  its  enactments,  was  that  hu- 
man society  could  not  exist,  or  develop  profitably,  with- 
out the  killing  of  enemies,  retaliation  in  kind,  condemna- 
tion of  men,  oath-taking,  royalty,  slavery,  divorce,  usury 
and  private  capital.  None  of  these  things  had  a  place  in 
the  society  for  whose  coming  Jesus  lived  and  died.  There 
would  be  no  wars  under  the  new  regime.  For  war  is  pos- 
sible only  where  men  are  willing  to  kill  their  real  or  sup- 
posed enemies.  It  cannot  be  carried  on  where  men,  fol- 
lowing their  own  judgment,  refuse  to  obey  any  man's 
order  to  kill  indiscriminately  the  citizens  of  another 
country  for  honor  or  conquest  or  to  revenge  a  slight,  and 
where  men  cultivate  a  manly  spirit  of  self-control,  for- 
bearance, patience,  consideration  and  magnanimity  to- 
ward real  enemies.  Jesus  was  convinced  that  in  the  bet- 
ter society  to  come,  men  would  love  their  enemies,  and 
seek  to  overcome  their  evil  disposition  by  kindliness  and 
active  work  for  their  welfare.  This  would,  of  course, 
preclude  the  barbarity  of  war  as  completely  as  the  out- 
grown barbarity  of  cannibalism. 

The  penal  code  of  the  Hebrews  was  based  on  the  princi- 
ple of  retaliation.  Like  the  Code  of  Hammurabi,  the 
Mosaic  Codes  prescribed  that  an  eye  should  be  taken  for 
an  eye,  a  tooth  for  a  tooth,2  a  life  for  a  life.3  The  harsh- 
ness of  this  legal  enactment  was  often  relieved  in  civilized 
countries  by  a  provision  for  monetary  restitution.  Jesus, 
however,  attacked  the  principle  itself  as  out  of  harmony 
with  his  idea  of  justice.  His  criticism  was  that  this  legal 
measure  did  not  serve  any  purpose  of  correction,  did  not 

lMatth.,  vi,  22  ff. 
*  Leviticus,  xxiv,  20. 
•Lev.,  xxiv,  18. 


302  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZAEETH 

reach  the  root  of  the  evil,  did  not  change  an  unrighteous 
into  a  righteous  life.  In  his  judgment  that  could  be  ac- 
complished only  by  destroying  the  evil  in  the  man  by  bring- 
ing good,  wholesome,  kindly  influences  to  bear  upon  his 
character.  It  is  evident  that,  if  Jesus  had  meant  to  re- 
strict the  operation  of  his  superior  principle  to  such 
wrongs  as  the  courts  take  no  cognizance  of,  while  approv- 
ing the  lex  talionis  as  applied  by  the  courts,  he  would  not 
have  selected  for  his  distinct  rejection  a  statement  in  the 
Law  that,  as  everybody  knew,  had  no  reference  to  pri- 
vate revenge,  but  to  judicial  action.  As  if  to  prevent  any 
minimizing  of  the  import  of  his  utterance,  he  added  that 
every  condemnatory  judgment  was  out  of  harmony  with 
his  ideal  of  the  method  of  dealing  with  evil-doers.  Jesus 
could  find  no  place  in  the  new  society  for  so-called  puni- 
tive justice,  by  which  one  deed  of  violence  is  punished 
by  another  deed  of  violence,  but  only  for  such  corrective 
measures  as  aim  at  the  same  time  to  the  reclaiming  of  the 
evil-doer  and  the  protection  of  the  innocent. 

Jesus  did  not  regard  the  oath  as  necessary  to  society. 
He  had  observed  the  natural  tendency  of  oath-taking  to 
invalidate  the  obligation  or  veracity  in  statements  not 
sworn  to.  But  his  chief  objection  seems  to  have  been  its 
lack  of  modesty.  A  creature  who  cannot  add  a  cubit  to 
his  stature,  and  does  not  know  what  the  morrow  will 
bring,  impotent  and  ignorant  both  as  to  his  own  nature 
and  in  regard  to  the  future  that  lies  before  him,  assumes 
to  swear  by  the  ever-living  God— for  all  oaths,  however 
worded,  are  essentially  oaths  by  God— that  he  will  do  this 
or  that!  The  Law  sanctioned  swearing  when  the  oath 
was  kept,  but  made  perjury  a  crime.1  Jesus  said: 
' '  Swear  not ! ' '  ' '  Tell  the  truth ! ' '  The  Church,  less  con- 
fident in  the  potency  and  safety  of  just  telling  the  truth, 
was  glad  to  learn  from  her  scribes  that  Jesus  probably 
had  in  mind  only  some  ill-sounding  curse-words  and 
asseverations  that  too  easily  fall  from  the  lips  of  Orientals 
in  the  rush  of  conversation,  not  an  oath  that  really  had 

1  Lev.,  xix,  12. 


THE  TEACHING  OF  JESUS  303 

any  significance,  and  she  continued  to  swear.  But  the 
probability  is  against  this  scholastic  construction.  If 
Jesus  had  meant  to  impress  upon  the  minds  of  his  disciples 
such  a  distinction  between  private  swearing  and  public 
swearing,  he  could  not  have  more  completely  forgotten  to 
mention  the  only  thing  for  which  he  is  supposed  to  have 
called  their  attention  to  the  ancient  law,  or  more  abso- 
lutely have  led  them  away  from  any  thought  of  a  subtle 
distinction  between  public  and  private  swearing  to  the 
idea  that  he,  like  some  other  teachers,  rejected  the  oath  as 
such.  That  is  what  the  Essenes  seem  to  have  done. 
Josephus  relates  that  they  rejected  every  oath,  and  con- 
sidered the  taking  of  an  oath  worse  than  perjury,1  and 
that  on  this  account  Herod  did  not  demand  of  them  an 
oath  of  allegiance,  as  he  did  of  the  Pharisees.2  In  view 
of  this,  his  statement  that  at  their  initiation  into  the  so- 
ciety the  members  bound  themselves  with  an  oath3  is 
subject  to  the  same  doubt  as  the  similar  statement  in  re- 
gard to  the  Christians  in  Pliny's  letter  to  Trajan. 
Neither  the  Essene  nor  the  Christian  brotherhood  prob- 
ably looked  upon  the  ceremony  of  initiation  in  the  light 
of  an  oath. 

Jesus  looked  for  a  society  where  there  would  be  no 
kings  or  rulers,  where  no  man  would  exercise  authority 
or  lord  it  over  his  fellows.4  This  principle  rendered  it 
impossible  for  him  to  share  the  common  desire  for  a  Mes- 
siah. He  knew  that  what  the  world  needed  was  not  a 
Messiah,  a  king  of  the  Jews,  or  an  emperor  of  the  nations, 
but  a  race  of  men  subject  to  no  man's  bidding  but  eager 
to  serve,  and  counting  him  greatest  who,  with  the  least 
desire  to  impose  his  authority  on  men,  is  able,  by  hum- 
ble and  faithful  service,  to  exercise  the  widest  influence 
for  good.  In  one  sense  Jesus  was,  therefore,  like  Plato,  a 
philosophical  anarchist.  But  his  anarchy  was  tempered 

^Bellum  judaicum,  II,  135. 
2  Ant.,  xv,  371. 

*Bellum  judaicum,  II,  139-142. 
'  Luke,  xxii,  24  ff. 


304  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZAEETH 

by  his  theocratic  idea.  He  disbelieved  in  man's  authority 
over  man,  because  he  believed  so  earnestly  in  God's  au- 
thority over  man.  If  he  reflected  at  all  upon  the  need  of 
light  and  leading  for  the  more  and  more  complicated 
activities  of  society,  he  may  have  looked  for  a  special 
prophetic  order,  or  for  the  endowment  of  men  in  every 
walk  of  life  with  the  necessary  insight  and  power.  That 
is  what  every  democracy  must  depend  upon.  It  must 
have  interpreters  of  the  laws  of  the  universe,  moral  and 
physical,  and  men  and  women  who,  possessed  of  extra- 
ordinary knowledge  and  skill,  put  these  to  the  service  of 
the  people.  Jesus  did  not  distinctly  express  his  views  on 
the  question  of  slavery.  But  there  is  every  reason  to  be- 
lieve that  he  shared  the  views  of  the  Essenes,  who  had  no 
slaves  but  were  all  free,  working  one  for  the  other.1  It 
is  certain  that  there  were  no  slaves  in  his  little  society, 
and  his  attitude  on  the  subject  of  authority  precludes  ap- 
parently the  possibility  of  his  approving  slavery  as  an 
institution. 

In  the  future  society  there  would  be  no  divorce,  accord- 
ing to  the  view  of  Jesus.  Marriage  would  be  entered  only 
by  some  men  and  women  for  the  propagation  of  the  race, 
and  be  absolutely  indissoluble,  except  by  death.2  He 
seems  to  have  regarded  married  life  as  a  condition  proper 
for  a  certain  class  in  society  from  which  those  physically 
unfit  for  the  sexual  function  should  be  naturally  excluded, 
and  from  which  others,  following  his  own  example,  might 
profitably  exclude  themselves  for  the  sake  of  the  king- 
dom of  heaven,3  in  order  to  serve  its  interests  and  to  real- 
ize in  their  own  lives  the  strictest  demands  of  its 
righteousness. 

1  Philo,  II,  457 ;  Josephus,  Ant.,  xviii,  21. 

2  This  is  clear  from  Marie,  x,  11,  12.     In  Matth.,  v,  32,  and  xix,  9, 
"save  for  the  cause  of  adultery "  has  been  added.     The  addition  is 
already  found  in  the  Sinaitic  Syriac;  but,  weighty  as  this  testimony 
always  is,  it  cannot  prove  that  the  phrase  was  an  original  part  of  the 
saying  of  Jesus.     Mark  could  have  no  motive  in  leaving  it  out;  but 
the  motive  for  adding  it  is  obvious. 

3  Matth.  xix,  11,  12. 


THE  TEACHING  OF  JESUS  305 

The  Jew  was  forbidden  by  the  Law  from  practising 
usury  on  Jews  but  permitted  to  charge  interest  on  his 
loans  to  Gentiles.1  The  result  was  that  many  a  well-to- 
do  son  of  Abraham  refused  to  relieve  by  a  loan  the  dis- 
tress of  his  fellow  countryman,  while  he  was  quite  ready 
to  accommodate  a  Gentile  who  had  good  securities,  and  to 
charge  such  interest  as  he  could  get  in  view  of  all  the 
circumstances.  Thus  the  often  accidental  and  unmerited 
possession  of  money  gave  a  power  over  another  man's  life 
apt  to  increase  and  to  rob  him  of  his  independence.  Jesus 
could  not  conceive  of  this  fruitful  source  of  enmity  con- 
tinuing under  the  new  regime.  Men  would  not  hold  back 
the  needed  loan,2  unless  they  could  make  profit  out  of  the 
necessities  of  their  brothers.  In  fact,  he  deemed  the  heap- 
ing up  of  vast  private  fortunes  as  an  evil  destined  to  pass 
away  with  the  coming  of  the  kingdom  of  heaven.  He 
could  not  harmonize  with  his  ideal  of  social  righteousness 
the  co-existence  of  great  wealth  in  the  hands  of  few  and 
great  destitution  prevailing  among  the  many.  The  prin- 
ciple of  a  man  getting  for  himself  all  that  he  can  seemed 
to  him  wrong,  and  he  desired  to  see  it  superseded  by  the 
principle  of  sharing.  He  appears  to  have  reached  his  con- 
clusions on  this  point,  not  only  through  the  impression  of 
unjust  inequalities,  but  even  more  by  observation  of  the 
evil  effect  upon  character  of  wealth  thus  held.  How  far 
he  had  given  any  thought  to  the  manner  in  which  a  better 
method  of  distribution  could  be  developed,  is  difficult  to 
say.  He  felt  that  only  the  principle  of  sharing  with 
others  could  bring  about  a  society  in  which  the  extremes 
of  wealth  and  poverty  should  no  longer  exist. 

There  can  be  no  doubt  that  Jesus  expected  the  full  op- 
eration of  these  principles  only  in  the  new  social  order  or 
theocracy  which  he  designated  as  the  kingdom  of  heaven. 
But  it  would  be  quite  unwarranted  to  infer  from  this,  as 
some  have  done,  that  he  did  not  look  for  their  application 
until  "the  millennium"  should  come,  and  was  well  aware 

1  Deuteronomy,  xxiii,  19,  20. 
*Matth.,  vi,  42. 
30 


306  THE  PROPHET  OF  NAZARETH 

that  they  were  impracticable  under  present  circumstances. 
The  arguments  adduced  to  prove  that  he  did  not  regard 
them  as  obligatory  even  upon  himself,  or  that  he  did  not 
give  them  the  radical  sense  they  seem  to  bear  on  the  sur- 
face, are  for  the  most  part  of  a  trivial  nature.  It  is  said 
that  he  cannot  have  believed  in  the  overcoming  of  evil 
with  good  on  all  occasions,  as  he  drove  the  money-changers 
from  the  temple,1  and  once  commanded  his  disciples  to 
sell  all  that  they  had  and  buy  swords.2  On  the  former 
occasion  he  may  indeed  have  given  way  to  a  passion  of 
anger,  and  it  is  by  no  means  certain  that  he  would  have 
afterwards  wished  his  disciples  to  follow  his  example  and 
to  defend  it,  though  it  should  be  remembered  that  there  is 
no  element  of  revenge  or  of  private  or  official  punishment 
in  the  act,  and  that  he  may  have  had  no  aim  but  correc- 
tion, and  no  motive  but  kindness.  The  words  with  which 
he  rebuked  Peter  for  his  use  of  the  sword3  are  too  plainly 
condemnatory  of  all  use  of  the  sword  to  permit  the 
thought  that  he  had  ever  contemplated  a  coup  d'etat  such 
as  must  have  been  in  his  mind,  if  he  actually  ordered  his 
followers  to  sell  all  their  possessions  and  buy  swords,  or 
even  had  thought  of  the  protection  of  his  person  against 
private  attacks  by  killing  or  maiming  his  enemies.  The 
evidence  seems  to  show  that  he  was  loyal  to  the  end  to 
the  convictions  he  had  so  clearly  expressed.  It  is  further- 
more averred  that  before  the  high-priest  he  was  willing 
to  be  put  under  oath,  even  though  he  did  not  swear  him- 
self. Even  Merx,  who  with  great  learning  has  gathered 
together  the  evidence  that  the  phrase,  "Thou  sayest  it," 
is  virtually  a  refusal  to  answer  the  question,  curiously 
enough  quotes  the  passage  to  show  that  Jesus  had  no  ob- 
jection to  being  put  under  oath.4  When  it  is  recognized 
that  we  have  no  knowledge  of  what  occurred  in  the  pres- 
ence of  the  high-priest,  this  in  itself  futile  argument  must 

1  Matth.,  xxi,  12  ff .  and  parallels. 

2  Luke,  xxii,  36. 

9  Matth.,  xxvi,  52. 

*  Cf .  Das  Evangelium  Matthaeus,  1902,  p.  101,  and  p.  392. 


THE  TEACHING  OF  JESUS  .      307 

be  finally  laid  aside.     The  idea  that  Jesus  cannot  have  been 
opposed  to  autocracy,  since  he  claimed  for  himself  royal 
authority,  is  based  on  a  misunderstanding  of  his  use  of 
the  term  "son  of  man"  and  on  late  additions  to  the  gospel. 
An  approval  of  usury  and  of  private  wealth  has  been 
found  by  many  in  the  parables  of  the  Talents1  and  the 
Unjust  Steward.2    Did  he  not  say  that  it  was  better  to 
put  money  in  a  bank  and  draw  interest  on  it  than  to  bury 
it  in  the  ground,  and  that  it  was  still  better  to  try  to  get 
an  enormous  profit  from  a  small  outlay  ?    Yes,  and  did  he 
not  say  that  it  was  better  for  a  steward  to  swindle  his 
master  and  make  friends  of  the  debtors  by  forgeries,  in 
order  to  secure  his  own  future,  than  to  await  the  ignomini- 
ous discovery  of  his  embezzlement,  since  by  such  wise  use 
of  money  it  was  possible  to  obtain  everlasting  life?     It 
should  not  be  necessary  to  indicate  the  point  of  the  first 
parable  which  passes  no  judgment  on  current  business 
methods,  least  of  all  contrary  to  the  plain  teaching  of 
Jesus  without  any  figure  of  speech  on  other  occasions,  but 
simply  inculcates  the  necessity  of  cultivating  such  powers 
as  a  man  possesses,  since  they  grow  with  use  and  are 
lost  if  not  used.     As  for  the  second,  it  seems  impossible 
to  recover  its  original  form.     It  is  equally  difficult  to  be- 
lieve that  Jesus  could  ever  have  looked  upon  so  clumsy 
a  forgery  as  a  wise  and  praiseworthy  expedient,  and  that 
he  could  have  commended  any  wisdom  in  the  use  of  the 
unrighteous  Mammon,  having  the  faintest  resemblance 
to  this,  as  likely  to  bring  about  a  happy  reunion  of  friends 
in  the  everlasting  habitations. 

Some  scholars  have  moved  in  the  opposite  direction. 
Instead  of  regarding  the  principles  laid  down  in  the  Ser- 
mon on  the  Mount  as  applicable,  in  the  judgment  of  Jesus, 
only  in  the  future  condition  of  things,  they  have  main- 
tained that  he  must  have  formulated  them  in  view  of  the 
transitoriness  of  present  conditions,  for  guidance  until 
the  kingdom  of  heaven  should  come.  Why  should  his 

1  Matth.,  xxv,  14  ff. ;  Luke,  xix,  11  ff. 

2  Luke,  xvi,  1  ff . 


308    .  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZAEETH 

disciples  take  vengeance  themselves  or  seek  to  secure  it 
through  courts,  bind  themselves  by  oaths,  care  for  places 
of  honor  and  authority,  get  married  or  obtain  divorce, 
keep  their  possessions  or  seek  to  increase  them,  when  the 
world  is  so  soon  to  come  to  an  end,  and  God  himself  will 
avenge  his  own,  give  them  to  sit  upon  thrones  judging 
the  twelve  tribes  of  Israel,  and  restore  to  them  manifold 
the  things  they  have  abandoned?  This  view  has  certain 
advantages.  It  does  not  need  to  twist  the  words  of  Jesus 
out  of  their  natural  meaning,  and  it  puts  into  relief  the 
eschatological  temper  that  unquestionably  existed  among 
the  disciples  of  Jesus,  and  has  found  expression  in  utter- 
ances ascribed  to  him  in  the  Gospels.  But  it  fails  to  do 
justice  to  those  sayings  of  his  that  prove  their  genuineness 
most  convincingly  by  being  in  contrast  with  this  prevail- 
ing apocalyptic  mood. 

His  most  characteristic  utterances  do  not  indicate  a 
view  of  the  kingdom  of  heaven  that  could  have  led  him 
to  share  the  ordinary  hopes  for  vengeance,  power  and 
wealth,  when  the  good  time  should  come,  while  preaching 
a  temporary  ethics  of  self-renunciation  as  a  preparation 
for  it.  The  parables  of  the  Sower,1  the  Leaven,2  and  the 
Mustard-seed3  bear  testimony  of  a  wholly  different  idea. 
The  ripe  corn  in  the  field,  and  the  tree  with  its  fruit-laden 
branches  only  reveal  the  nature  of  the  seed  that  was  sown 
in  the  ground.  The  piece  of  leaven  that  was  put  into  the 
lump  has  not  changed  in  character  by  permeating  the 
whole.  The  old  continues  side  by  side  with  the  new  until 
the  former  finally  disappears.  This  thought  is  found  in 
the  parable  of  the  fishes4  as  well  as  in  that  of  the  leaven. 
The  good  and  the  bad  cannot  be  separated,  until  at  the 
end  of  the  process  the  latter  are  eliminated.  The  reign 
of  God,  at  first  invisible,  like  the  seed  in  the  earth,  be- 
comes gradually  manifest  in  its  transforming  power,  like 

1Matth.,  xiii,  Iff.  and  parallels, 

*Matth.,  xiii,  33. 

*MattK,  xiii,  31,  32. 

.,  xiii,  47  ff. 


THE  TEACHING  OF  JESUS  309 

the  plant  that  puts  forth  first  the  stalk,  then  the  blade, 
and  then  the  ear  in  the  blade.1  It  exists  among  men  be- 
fore it  is  seen  and  recognized  as  a  new  social  order,  and 
it  continues  after  that  to  reveal  its  nature  in  undreamed 
beauty  of  blossom  and  sweetness  of  fruitage.  It  is  in 
harmony  with  this,  when  Jesus  declares  that  the  kingdom 
of  heaven  cometh  not  with  observation,  nor  shall  they  say, 
"Lo,  here!  or  Lo,  there!  for  the  kingdom  of  heaven  is 
within  you."2  If  the  Aramaic  term  used  by  Jesus  was 
"binetiru,  his  meaning  seems  to  have  been:  the  kingdom 
does  not  come  in  such  a  manner  that  men  may  lie  in  wait 
and  watch  for  its  appearance,  and  say,  "Here  it  is,"  or 
"There  it  is."  If  he  said  begawwekon,  it  can  only  have 
meant  "within  you."  But  even  if  he  said  benekon, 
1 '  among  you, ' '  the  context  makes  it  abundantly  plain  that 
he  meant  that  it  was  among  men  in  such  a  manner  that  it 
could  not  be  seen  and  located,  but  existed  as  an  inner 
reality,  in  their  lives.3 

It  is  not  by  leveling  down  the  ethical  demands  of  Jesus 
to  the  conventional  ideas  of  any  age,  nor  by  construing 
them  as  temporary  counsels  of  perfection,  by  which  a 
handful  of  men  might  be  prepared  for  a  presently  ex- 
pected end  of  the  world,  that  we  gain  a  conception  of  the 
real  grandeur  of  that  ideal  which  fired  his  soul  with 
enthusiasm,  and  made  his  life  what  it  was.  When  it  is 
said  that  his  ideal  of  a  better  social  order  is  an  idle  dream, 
and  that  his  type  of  righteousness  is  impracticable  under 
such  conditions  as  prevail  in  the  world,  two  facts  are  over- 
looked. No  dream  of  social  righteousness  can  justly  be 
regarded  as  idle  that  has  contributed  so  much  to  the 
moral  progress  of  the  world  as  this  hope  of  the  growing 
kingdom  of  heaven  on  earth  has  already  done.  And  be- 
fore it  is  pronounced  impracticable,  an  application  of  its 

1  Marie,  iv,  26-29. 
a  Luke,  xvii,  20,  21. 

•  This  passage  is  well  treated  in  Dalman,  Die  Worte  Jesu,  1898,  p. 
116  ff. 


310  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZABETH 

fundamental  principles  should  be  tried  on  a  larger  scale 
than  has  hitherto  been  the  case. 

Jesus  does  not  seem  to  have  defined  his  conception  of 
the  Father  in  heaven  in  any  other  way  than  he  denned 
his  idea  of  the  kingdom  of  heaven.  Chiefly  by  parables 
to  the  multitudes,  and  by  short  pithy  sayings  to  his  dis- 
ciples, he  intimated  what  he  thought  concerning  God, 
man's  relation  to  him,  and  the  proper  manner  of  serving 
him.  His  language,  when  speaking  of  these  subjects, 
is  simple  and  unconventional,  yet  of  great  dignity  and 
beauty.  There  are  abundant  signs  of  deep  and  independ- 
ent thinking,  but  no  traces  of  familiarity  with  the 
terminology  of  the  philosophical  schools  or  with  the  ques- 
tions discussed  by  them.  The  idea  of  the  fatherhood  of 
God,  even  in  an  ethical  sense,  existed  long  before  the 
time  of  Jesus,  and  had  found  fine  expression  in  later  Jew- 
ish literature.  The  mind  of  Jesus  seems  to  have  dwelt  on 
its  natural  implications.  As  in  the  case  of  man  his  great 
concern  was  about  the  rectitude  of  the  inner  disposition, 
so  in  the  case  of  God  the  question  of  his  moral  attitude, 
occupied  him  most.  He  did  not  doubt  his  unity,  eternity, 
omniscience  and  omnipotence.  But  was  he  the  Perfect 
Being  in  whom  his  ideal  of  rectitude,  truth  within  and 
adequate  manifestation,  justice  and  love  in  inseparable 
union,  was  absolute  reality?  In  our  ignorance  of  the 
early  life  of  Jesus,  we  cannot  deny  that  there  may  have 
been  a  period  of  storm  and  stress  when  this  question  agi- 
tated his  soul,  as  it  had  once  racked  the  mind  of  the  author 
of  Job.  There  are  in  his  teaching  those  frank  admissions, 
those  resolute  retrenchments,  those  bold  deviations  from 
current  views,  that  generally  betoken  conflict  as  well  as 
reflection.  Was  it  without  disenchantment  he  observed 
for  the  first  time  how  the  wicked  man's  field  flourished, 
while  the  parched  ground  of  some  God-fearing  widow 
refused  to  yield  bread  for  her  starving  little  ones  ?  Could 
he  always  behold  without  flinching  how  some  mighty 
tower  buried  beneath  its  falling  mass  righteous  men  and 
innocent  children,  and  how  the  life  of  some  rich  hypocrite 


THE  TEACHING  OF  JESUS  311 

passed  on  peacefully  to  its  end  without  accidents  to  ter- 
rify or  bereavements  to  make  sad?  However  that  may 
have  been,  in  his  public  ministry  he  is  animated  by  a 
faith  not  in  need  of  blinking  the  facts  of  existence  that 
belie  the  current  doctrine  of  retribution,  because  it  rests 
upon  the  perception  of  a  higher  law  of  compensation. 

In  his  parables  of  the  Lost  Coin,1  the  Lost  Sheep,2  and 
the  Lost  Son,3  Jesus  expressed  most  clearly  his  conviction 
that  active  love  is  the  world-conquering  and  world-trans- 
forming power.  There  is  nothing  so  insignificant,  there 
is  nothing  so  bad,  that  Divine  Love  does  not  care  for  it 
and  cannot  redeem  it.  The  impartiality  with  which  the 
sun  shines  and  the  rain  falls  is  not  a  sign  of  indifference  to 
moral  cosmic  ends,  but  only  an  indication  that  the  impar- 
tial Divine  Love  pursues  these  ends  without  necessary 
regard  to  the  imperfect  system  of  rewards  and  punish- 
ments with  which  human  justice  seeks  to  operate.  It  is 
more  conducive  to  the  moral  perfection  of  the  human  race 
to  let  the  sun  shine  and  the  rain  fall  without  discrimi- 
nation according  to  human  merit  and  demerit  than  it 
would  be  to  allow  the  sun  to  shine  and  the  rain  to  fall  only 
on  the  good  man's  field.  No  system  of  external  rewards 
and  punishments  can  make  men  righteous.4  The  actual 
divine  method  works  for  righteousness.  It  is  intrinsically 
right,  not  only  in  view  of  the  ultimate  product,  but  also 
at  every  point  of  its  administration.  For  the  law  of 
cause  and  effect  operates  unceasingly.  In  spite  of  appear- 
ances, the  divine  book-keeping  is  very  exact.  The  good 
rewards  itself,  and  the  evil  is  its  own  punishment;  the 
effect  inheres  in  the  act  and  engenders  a  retribution  that  is 
never  unjust  or  unmerciful.  The  man  who  prays  in 
public  and  is  seen  of  men  has  his  reward.5  He  who  gains 

1LuJce,  xv,  8-10. 

2  Luke,  xv,  3-7. 

8  Luke,  xv,  11  ff. 

*Cf.  Luke,  xvii,  10.  The  parable  of  the  workers  in  the  vineyard, 
Matth.,  xx,  1-16,  also  shows  this  connection  of  life  and  work,  not 
dominated  by  the  ordinary  ideas  of  retribution. 

0  Matth.,  vi,  5. 


312  THE  PROPHET  OF  NAZARETH 

the  world  is  rewarded  by  what  he  gains.  Had  he  sought 
a  good  character  or  spiritual  joy,  these  would  have  been 
his.  His  loss  is  not  less  real,  because  he  fails  to  appreciate 
that  of  which  he  has  deprived  himself. 

This  view  rendered  it  possible  for  Jesus  to  conceive  of 
the  Heavenly  Father  as  continuing  to  be  the  God  of 
those  who  by  his  power  are  raised  from  the  dead,  while 
allowing  others  to  return  to  their  dust  without  a  resur- 
rection.1 This  was  no  arbitrary  act  of  God.  In  those  fit 
to  survive  the  life-giving  power  of  God  appropriated  by 
living  in  harmony  with  his  supreme  law  of  love  brought 
about  its  own  result ;  as  long  as  they  were  living  his  love 
sought  the  lost  children. 

Jesus  regarded  God  as  the  Father,  not  only  of  the  Jews, 
but  of  the  Samaritans  and  the  Gentiles  also,  not  only  of 
the  good  but  of  the  bad  as  well.  That  the  Israelites  were 
the  sons  and  daughters  of  their  God,  was  a  common  notion. 
Hence  the  members  of  the  nation  were  regarded  as  broth- 
ers, having  one  father,  namely,  God.  The  parable  of  the 
Good  Samaritan2  teaches  that  a  member  of  this  despised 
people  is  a  brother  since  he  shows  a  brother's  spirit,  and 
acts  as  a  son  of  God  should.  Jesus  took  pains  to  empha- 
size the  fatherly  care  of  God  for  members  of  other  na- 
tions.3 His  parable  of  the  Vineyard4  indicates  that  he 
feared  the  overthrow  of  the  Jewish  theocracy  and  looked 
forward  to  the  establishment  of  the  intimate  relation 
that  it  involved  between  God  and  a  people  living  accord- 
ing to  the  principles  of  righteousness  in  which  he  believed. 
While  he  knew  that  God  always  acted  as  a  father  toward 
all  men,  he  also  realized  that  his  children  both  in  Israel 
and  among  the  other  nations  did  not  always  act  as  sons  of 

1Luke,  xx,  27-40.  "For  all  live  to  him"  has  been  recognized  by 
many  scholars  to  be  a  late  addition. 

2  Luke,  x,  29-37. 

*Luke,  iv,  25-27,  no  doubt  represents  an  actual  saying  of  Jesus, 
though  Luke  has  placed  it  out  of  its  true  chronological  position. 

Matth.,  xxi,  33  ff . ;  Mark,  xii,  1  ff . ;  Luke,  xx,  9  ff .  It  has  been 
retouched  in  all  recensions,  but  no  doubt  goes  back  in  its  original  form 
to  Jesus. 


THE  TEACHING  OF  JESUS  313 

God.  "If  ye  who  are  evil,"  he  said,  "know  how  to  give 
good  gifts  to  your  children,  how  much  more  shall  the 
Father  in  heaven  give  good  things  to  those  who  ask."1 
God  cares  for  his  children,  though  they  are  evil,  better 
than  they  ever  care  for  their  offspring.  They  should 
therefore  seek  to  be  perfect,  as  their  Father  in  heaven  is 
perfect.2  No  honor  can  be  greater  than  to  be  called  sons 
of  God.  But  he  did  not  single  out  any  class  of  men,  for 
instance  his  own  disciples,  as  worthy  of  this  title.  Still 
less  did  he  suggest  that  they  should  call  themselves  sons 
of  God,  or  children  of  God,  in  distinction  from  their  fel- 
low-men. Such  a  spirit  of  self -laudation  he  condemned  in 
the  parable  of  the  Publican  and  the  Pharisee.3  Least  of 
all  did  he  think  of  applying  it  to  himself  exclusively. 
The  notion  that  he  called  himself  "the  Son  of  God,"  and 
spoke  of  God  as  "my  Father"  in  distinction  from  "your 
Father,"  is  based  on  manifestly  late  additions  to  the  Syn- 
optic gospels,  and  free  and  misleading  translations  into 
Greek  of  the  original,  which  did  not  use  the  possessive 
pronouns.  Nevertheless,  it  is  certain  that  Jesus  derived 
both  comfort  and  confidence  from  the  thought  that  he 
was  a  child  of  the  Father  in  heaven,  an  object  of  his  love 
and  care,  an  agent  for  the  spread  of  his  truth,  a  herald  of 
his  coming  kingdom,  an  interpreter  of  his  holy  will,  a 
man  earnestly  endeavoring  to  live  as  a  son  of  God. 

Jesus  broke  with  the  popular  religious  cult  in  regard 
to  sacrifices,  sabbath-keeping,  sacred  washings,  and  the 
distinctions  between  clean  and  unclean  meat.  He  also 
turned  his  criticism  against  such  important  matters  as 
public  prayer,  fasting  and  almsgiving  in  which  piety  was 
especially  wont  to  express  itself.  His  fundamental  objec- 
tion to  public  prayer  was  that  it  was  offered  in  the  wrong 
place.  Prayer,  in  his  opinion,  should  be  offered  in  the 
closet  where  the  fact  that  a  man  was  praying  could  not  be 

1  Matth.,  vii,  11. 
*Matt1i.,  v,  48. 


314  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZARETH 

observed  by  men.1  The  results  of  such  private  com- 
munion with  God  where  there  was  no  temptation  to  con- 
template the  effect  upon  listening  human  ears,  or  to  spin 
out  long  addresses,  would  be  manifest  in  the  daily  life. 
But  he  felt  that  a  truly  reverent  soul  must  shrink  from  lay- 
ing bare  its  deepest  experiences  and  most  urgent  needs  in 
the  embarrassing  presence  of  men.  It  seemed  to  him  im- 
modest and  conducive  to  untruth  and  conventionality.  His- 
tory abundantly  proves  that  he  was  right  in  this  conten- 
tion. When  men  pray  publicly,  there  is  a  decided  tend- 
ency to  make  long  speeches,  to  emphasize  a  thought  by 
repetition  or  slight  variation,  and  to  frame  the  address 
with  a  view  to  its  effect  upon  the  audience.  Seeing  the 
irresistible  force  of  this  tendency,  Jesus  counseled  his  dis- 
ciples not  to  pray  in  public,  and  fearing  the  effect  of  long 
habit  on  their  private  devotions,  he  warned  them  not  to 
use  many  words,  since  the  Father  in  heaven  knew  all  their 
needs.  The  church  has  paid  little  or  no  attention  to  his 
advice,  but  has  vied  with  the  heathen  nations  both  in  re- 
gard to  the  publicity  and  the  length  of  the  prescribed 
prayers. 

The  fact  that  Jesus  and  his  disciples  did  not  fast 
aroused  unfavorable  criticism.  His  remarks  about  the 
new  piece  and  the  old  garment  and  the  new  wine  and  the 
old  wine-skins2  show  how  utterly  foreign  to  his  concep- 
tion of  religion  this  exercise  was.  In  the  Sermon  on  the 
Mount  he  advised  his  disciples  to  anoint  their  heads  and 
wash  their  faces  when  they  fasted  so  as  not  to  be  seen 
fasting  by  men.3  Sack-cloth  and  ashes  were  the  regular 
accompaniments  of  fasting.  The  appearance  of  a  man  in 
society  dressed  as  for  a  festival,  with  face  washed  and 
head  anointed  was  quite  incongruous  with  his  observing 
a  fast.  It  would  indeed  be  difficult  for  him  to  abstain 
from  food  without  being  seen  of  men  to  fast.  Men  fasted 
in  order  to  show  publicly  their  sorrow,  humility  and  re- 

1  Matth.,  vi,  5-8. 

2  Matth.,  ix,  16,  17. 
8  Matth.,  vi,  16-18. 


THE  TEACHING  OF  JESUS  315 

pentance.  Jesus  seems  to  have  objected  to  the  custom 
on  two  grounds.  A  public  display  of  humility  and  contri- 
tion appeared  to  him  immodest  and  absurd,  inasmuch  as 
humility  is  already  gone  when  it  is  professed,  and  repent- 
ance has  not  yet  been  born  until  it  manifests  itself  in 
righteous  conduct.  Then  a  man  should  seek  to  bear  his 
own  burden  patiently  and  calmly,  without  betraying  its 
weight  to  others  who  have  theirs,  and  rather  add  his  daily 
contribution  to  the  common  fund  of  joy  and  contentment 
by  which  all  are  sustained.  The  larger  branches  of  the 
Church  have  continued  the  custom,  without  the  slightest 
regard  to  the  warning  of  Jesus,  while  some  of  the  Protest- 
and  denominations  have  abandoned  the  practice  but  not 
without  inventing  new  forms  for  the  public  display  of 
contrition  and  sorrow  for  sin. 

The  Hebrew  word  for  "justice"  became  in  later  Juda- 
ism a  technical  term  for  "almsgiving."  This  was  not  a 
backward  step.  It  was  the  addition  to  a  noble  word  of  a 
still  finer  meaning,  the  supplementing  of  the  idea  of 
righteousness  by  the  element  of  active  sympathy.  Giving 
to  the  poor  became  a  part  of  religion.  It  was  felt  to  be  a 
lending  to  the  Lord,  a  support  of  his  cause  who  was  the 
friend  of  the  poor  and  the  needy,  the  widow  and  the 
orphan.  A  number  of  causes  helped  to  make  it  one  of 
the  most  popular  religious  functions.  That  God  was 
served  by  the  relieving  of  suffering  fellow-men,  was  an 
idea  appealing  to  the  noblest  instincts  in  man.  The 
value  of  this  service  could  be  easily  seen,  and  the  con- 
sciousness of  doing  an  unmistakably  good  deed  was  com- 
forting. Then  there  was  the  pleasure  of  acting  as  a  hu- 
man Providence,  of  receiving  gratitude,  of  being  called 
benefactors,  of  enjoying  popularity,  of  being  gladly  seen 
and  enthusiastically  greeted  by  men,  of  exercising  a 
power  over  them  apparently  not  based  on  violence,  of 
having  a  good  reputation  and  comparative  immunity  from 
the  criticism  to  which  obvious  selfishness  is  always  ex- 
posed. Besides,  there  was  the  conviction  that  it  is  profit- 
able to  lend  unto  the  Lord  who  pays  a  generous  interest. 


316  THE  PROPHET  OF  NAZABETH 

Jesus  strongly  believed  in  the  principle  of  sharing  with 
the  needy.  But  he  desired  the  abolition  of  poverty  by 
such  a  distribution  of  wealth  as  would  leave  no  dispro- 
portionate fortunes  in  private  hands.  As  he  realized 
that  a  great  obstacle  to  such  an  equitable  distribution  was 
the  doling  out  of  alms  publicly  in  the  name  of  religion  by 
men  who  had  no  scruples  as  to  the  methods  by  which  they 
gained  their  wealth  and,  in  spite  of  their  alms-giving,  con- 
tinued to  hold  on  to  and  increase  their  large  fortunes,  he 
directed  his  attack  against  the  public  bestowal  of  charity, 
the  giving  of  money  to  the  Lord  in  such  a  manner  as  to  be 
seen  of  men.1  He  seems  to  have  looked  upon  the  reliev- 
ing of  a  brother's  need  in  public  as  indecent.  That  a 
brother  was  permitted  to  suffer  appeared  to  his  mind  as  a 
matter  to  be  ashamed  of,  a  condition  to  be  silently  and 
quietly  corrected.  That  a  man  should  hold  in  his  hands 
the  ransom  of  a  thousand  lives,  and  seek  to  be  known  by 
men  when  out  of  his  abundance  he  threw  some  crumbs  to 
his  starving  brothers,  seemed  to  him  equally  abnormal. 
The  Church  has  too  often  failed  to  take  this  ground  and 
encouraged  rather  than  rebuked  ostentatious  giving  to 
the  Lord. 

A  critical  study  of  the  records  has  shown  with  increas- 
ing clearness  that  Jesus  had  no  sympathy  with  the  idea 
of  saving  men's  souls  by  sacramental  magic.  Whether 
weight  is  given  to  literary  and  historical  considerations, 
or  attention  is  limited  solely  to  the  restoration  of  the  orig- 
inal text,  it  becomes  certain  that  Jesus  did  not  command 
his  disciples  to  baptize  the  nations.  It  is  equally  evident 
that  he  did  not  institute  any  Supper  in  remembrance  of 
him.  The  idea  of  salvation  through  any  cermony  was 
utterly  foreign  to  his  mind.  Nor  is  there  the  slightest 
indication  that  he  believed  in  salvation  through  human 
sacrifice  or  human  merits.  He  never  taught  that  God 
needed  the  blood  of  the  Messiah,  or  his  own  blood,  to  sat- 
isfy his  justice  and  to  enable  him  to  pardon  the  sins  of 
men.  On  the  contrary,  he  distinctly  taught  men  to  rely 

,  vi,  1-4. 


THE  TEACHING  OF  JESUS  317 

upon  God 's  forgiveness,  if  they  were  themselves  willing  to 
forgive,1  and  to  assure  others  of  God 's  forgiveness  without 
any  suggestion  of  a  vicarious  payment  of  their  debts 
through  blood.2  Nor  did  he  connect  salvation  with  mem- 
bership either  in  the  holy  nation  or  in  an  organized  body 
of  believers.  To  inherit  eternal  life  man  must  obey  the 
great  commandments  of  the  Law,3  love  God  and  men;  he 
must  lose  his  life  in  humble,  faithful,  loving  service  in 
order  to  find  it.  That  is  his  doctrine  of  salvation.  A 
Samaritan  or  a  Gentile  may  thus  be  saved  from  selfishness 
as  well  as  a  Jew.  Nor  did  Jesus  connect  salvation  in  any 
way  with  belief  in  himself.  There  is  no  teaching  of  Jesus 
concerning  his  own  person  to  be  gleaned  by  a  careful  his- 
torian from  the  records  of  his  life.  What  he  thought 
about  himself  is  reflected  in  what  he  taught  concerning 
man,  his  duties  and  his  privileges,  his  relation  to  the 
Father  in  heaven  and  his  future  destiny.4 

*Matth.,  vi,  14. 

*Matth.,  i,  6. 

•Matth.,  xix,  18  ff. 

4  The  insight  of  genius  and  the  sympathy  of  spiritual  kinship  often 
travel  faster  than  scientific  research,  with  its  cumbersome  critical 
apparatus  and  its  exacting  method.  Leo  Tolstoi  perceives  the  thought 
of  Jesus  more  clearly  than  the  majority  of  exegetes.  Among  trained 
theologians,  JS'athan  Soderblom  has  a  keen  sense  of  the  larger  bear- 
ings of  the  moral  ideas  of  Jesus  (Jesu  Bargspredikan,  1899).  Well- 
hausen  understands  that  Jesus  was  a  prophet,  and  has  described,  with 
fine  appreciation,  his  religious  message  (Israelitische  und  Jiidische 
Geschichte,  3d  ed.  1897,  p.  374).  He  fails,  however,  to  do  equal  jus- 
tice of  the  ethical  teachings  of  Jesus.  From  his  otherwise  so  admira- 
ble sketch  one  would  not  know  that  Jesus  had  taken  a  definite  stand 
against  the  killing  of  enemies,  the  legal  principle  of  punitive  jus- 
tice to  the  ethical  teachings  of  Jesus.  From  his  otherwise  so  admira- 
autocracy,  and  the  accumulation  of  private  wealth.  Yet  the  attitude 
of  Jesus  upon  these  vital  questions  is  likely  to  interest  thoughtful 
men  quite  as  much  as  his  theological  views. 


CHAPTER  XII 

THE  HISTOEIC  INFLUENCE  OP  JESUS 

During  his  life  Jesus  exerted  a  powerful  influence 
upon  those  who  came  into  contact  with  him  through  his 
teaching,  his  works  and  his  spirit.  Men  were  attracted 
by  the  beauty  and  originality  of  his  speech;  they  were 
held  by  the  grandeur  and  nobility  of  his  thought.  He 
spoke  with  the  authority  of  a  prophet,  and  his  message 
concerned  that  kingdom  of  heaven  for  whose  coming  men 
in  Israel  eagerly  looked.  His  manner  of  life  strengthened 
the  impression  of  his  words.  The  cures  he  wrought 
spread  his  fame  abroad.  Yet  he  .laid  up  no  treasures  for 
himself.  What  he  had  he  generously  shared  with  the 
poor.  Men  were  accustomed  to  associate  such  moral  ear- 
nestness and  sincere  piety  as  he  showed  with  ascetic  habits 
and  a  zeal  for  legal  observances.  A  man  who  drank  wine 
with  tax-gatherers  and  conversed  with  harlots,  defended 
sabbath-breaking  and  neglected  sacred  ablutions,  while 
he  criticised  the  law  of  Moses  for  not  teaching  a  suffi- 
ciently high  type  of  righteousness,  and  exemplified  in  his 
conduct  the  moral  principles  he  taught,  could  not  fail  to 
be  observed  by  many  eyes.  But  more  than  anything  he 
said  or  did,  it  was  the  charm  of  his  personality  that  drew 
men  to  him.  Whether  they  understood  his  words  or  not, 
whether  they  were  able  to  share  his  view  of  life  or  not, 
whether  they  followed  him  a  day  or  a  year,  they  could  not 
escape  from  his  spirit.  His  disciples  left  him  and  fled  on 
the  last  night  of  his  life.  But  his  tragic  death  impressed 
them  perchance  as  deeply  as  the  women  who  stood  afar 
off  and  heard  his  death-cry.  "Those  who  loved  him  at 
the  first  did  not  cease  to  love  him."1  He  had  been  their 

1  Josephus,  Ant.y  xviii,  64.  The  passage  is  spurious,  but  the  senti- 
ment is  true. 

318 


THE  HISTOEIC  INFLUENCE  OF  JESUS  319 

leader  while  he  lived.  He  continued  to  occupy  their 
thoughts  and  to  be  the  directing  force  in  their  lives  after 
he  was  dead. 

The  spell  of  his  spirit  was  upon  his  disciples.  His 
aphorisms,  his  parables,  his  answers  to  captious  ques- 
tions, could  not  be  forgotten.  The  horrors  of  his  death 
could  not  efface  the  memories  of  his  life.  They  clustered 
about  the  hills  of  Galilee  and  its  blue  lake.  Here  he  had 
spoken,  with  manly  courage  to  those  in  high  station,  with 
gentle  sympathy  to  earth's  little  ones,  proclaiming  good 
tidings  to  the  poor.  Here  he  had  lived  his  simple  and  un- 
selfish life,  healing  the  sick,  helping  the  needy,  comfort- 
ing the  sad  of  heart,  befriending  the  outcast,  and  bringing 
very  near  to  all  the  kingdom  of  their  hope.  Here  they 
had  walked  with  him  and  cherished  in  secret  the  convic- 
tion that  it  was  he  who  should  redeem  Israel.  How  far  it 
would  have  been  possible  for  such  a  purely  spiritual  im- 
pression to  maintain  itself  and  to  transmit  to  later  genera- 
tions an  attitude  of  loyalty  to  him  and  to  his  cause,  is  a 
question  that  cannot  be  answered.  If  Jesus  had  lived  in 
the  days  of  Jeremiah,  his  disciples  would  not  have  looked 
for  his  return  upon  the  clouds  of  heaven,  or  believed  that 
he  had  been  raised  from  the  dead,  since  the  necessary  con- 
ditions, the  hope  of  a  Messiah  and  the  doctrine  of  a  resur- 
rection, did  not  then  exist.  But  the  fall  of  Jerusalem 
would  have  been  likely  to  bring  his  words  to  honor,  center 
the  interest  on  his  personality,  produce  a  more  or  less  re- 
liable biography,  and  give  him  a  place  of  equal  honor  at 
least  with  the  prophet  of  Anathoth. 

A  wider  influence  was  unquestionably  secured  for  Jesus 
through  the  expectation  that  he  would  soon  return  to 
earth  as  the  Messiah,  and  the  belief  that  he  had  been 
raised  to  life  again  on  the  third  day  after  his  death. 
Early  Christian  literature  shows  how  general  and  intense 
was  the  hope  of  his  coming  to  overthrow  the  Roman  em- 
pire and  to  establish  the  kingdom  of  heaven.  There  is 
every  reason  to  believe  that  the  immediate  disciples  of 
.Jesus  expected  this  even  to  occur  in  their  own  generation. 


320  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZAEETH 

Already  in  his  life-time  they  had  looked  forward  to  a  day 
when  he  should  show  himself  to  Israel  as  the  Messiah. 
At  first  his  death  would  naturally  seem  to  put  a  barrier 
against  the  realization  of  this  hope.  But  in  large  and  in- 
fluential Jewish  circles  death  was  no  longer  looked  upon 
as  the  end  of  sentient  and  self-conscious  life.  The  Persian 
doctrine  of  a  resurrection  had  been  introduced,  and  the 
land  beyond  the  grave  had  been  mapped  out  and  become 
familiar  ground.  As  the  raising  of  the  dead  was  not  yet 
ascribed  to  the  Messiah,  and  not  universally  conceived  of 
as  occurring  on  the  last  day,  this  act  of  God's  power  might 
be  looked  for  whenever  circumstances  seemed  to  warrant 
it.  Thus  Herod  Antipas  is  said  to  have  feared  that  Jesus 
was  none  else  than  John  the  Baptist  raised  from  the 
dead.1  At  Caesarea  Philippi  the  disciples  report  that 
many  regarded  Jesus  as  John  the  Baptist,  Elijah,  Jere- 
miah or  some  other  prophet  returned  to  life  again.2  It 
is  not  strange  therefore  that  the  belief  should  have  grown 
up  that  Jesus  himself  had  been  raised  from  the  dead. 
The  emphasis  placed  in  early  Christian  writings  upon  the 
statement  that  his  resurrection  was  "  according  to  the 
Scriptures"3  shows  the  influence  of  supposed  Messianic 
prophecies  in  the  Old  Testament  in  shaping  this  doctrine.4 

^Matth.,  xiv,  1,  2;  MarTc,  vi,  14-16;  in  Luke,  ix,  7-9,  Herod  only 
wonders  who  Jesus  is,  while  some  of  his  suite  regard  him  as  John  the 
Baptist. 

2Matth.,  xvi,  14;  MarTc,  viii,  28  (Jeremiah  omitted);  Luke,  ix,  19 
(Jeremiah  omitted).  Cf.  also  MarTc,  vi,  15;  Luke,  ix,  8.  The  story 
in  Matth.,  xxvii,  52,  53,  according  to  which  many  saints  were  raised, 
came  forth  from  their  tombs,  entered  the  holy  city  and  appeared  to 
many  at  the  time  of  Jesus*  death,  shows  not  less  clearly  how  little 
the  thought  of  a  resurrection  was  restricted  to  the  last  day.  The  ad- 
dition "after  his  resurrection/'  made  to  bring  the  story  into  har- 
mony with  the  doctrine  that  * '  Christ  was  raised  from  the  dead  as  the 
first-fruits  of  those  that  are  asleep"  (I  Cor.,  xv,  20),  is  lacking  in  the 
Evangeliarium  Hierosolymitanum.  This  seems  to  have  been  generally 
overlooked. 

8 1  Cor.,  xv,  4;  Acts,  ii,  25  ff.;  xiii,  34ff.;  John,  xx,  9;  Luke,  xxiv, 
46. 

* Ps.,  xvi,  8-11,  is  directly  quoted.  If  "he  will  not  suffer  his  holy 
one  to  see  corruption"  was  thought  to  refer  to  the  Messiah,  since 


THE  HISTOEIC  INFLUENCE  OF  JESUS  321 

From  the  same  source  manifestly  comes  the  vacillation 
between  "three  days  and  three  nights"1  and  "on  the 
third  day. '  '2  How  early  the  disciples  of  Jesus  became  con- 
vinced that  he  had  been  raised  from  the  dead,  cannot  be 
ascertained  with  certainty.  There  seems  to  be  no  good 
reason  for  doubting  that  the  conception  goes  back  to  the 
immediate  disciples  of  Jesus.3  If  Romans  i  and  I  Corin- 
thians xv,  1-2,  12  ff.  were  penned  by  Paul,  the  oldest  docu- 
ments referring  to  the  resurrection  of  Jesus  would  have 
been  written  not  more  than  a  quarter  of  a  century  after 
his  death. 

In  spite  of  the  fact  that  the  clouds  never  bore  him  back, 
the  followers  of  the  prophet  of  Nazareth  continued  to 
gaze  steadfastly  into  the  sky  for  the  sign  of  the  Son  of 
Man.  Generations  passed  and  he  "delayed  his  coming"; 
but  faith,  scorning  repeated  disenchantments,  drew 
strength  to  meet  the  bitterest  persecutions  from  the  sure 
prophetic  word.  Only  as  the  fortunes  of  the  Church 

David  had  been  allowed  to  see  corruption,  it  followed  of  necessity 
that  the  Messiah  must  be  raised  before  the  fourth  day.  For  it  seems 
to  have  been  commonly  held  that  corruption  set  in  on  the  fourth  day, 
when  the  face  changed,  and  that  the  soul  then  took  its  final  leave  of 
the  body.  Cf.  Babylonian  Talmud,  Yebamoth,  20a,  and  Bereshith 
Eabba,  100;  it  is  also  to  be  observed  that  Lazarus  had  been  in  his 
tomb  four  days  in  John,  xi,  17.  The  basis  of  this  idea  was  undoubt- 
edly the  occurrence  of  reanimation  in  cases  of  apparent  death.  Such 
figures  of  speech  as  "  after  two  days  will  he  revive  us,  on  the  third 
day  he  will  raise  us  up,  and  we  shall  live  before  him"  (Hosea,  vi,  2), 
current  at  a  time  when  the  idea  of  a  resurrection  was  quite  unknown 
in  Israel,  clearly  go  back  to  this  physical  phenomenon.  Three  days 
and  three  nights  would  consequently  be  the  utmost  limit,  if  the 
Messiah  were  not  to  "see  corruption."  Matth.,  xii,  46,  shows  that 
Jonah's  sojourn  in  the  belly  of  the  fish  exactly  that  length  of  time 
(ii,  1)  seemed  to  some  typical  of  the  sojourn  of  the  Messiah  in  death 
before  his  resurrection. 

1  John,  ii,  19-22;  Matth.,  xii,  40. 

2 1  Cor.,  xv,  4,  and  other  passages.  ' '  The  third  day ' '  is  differently 
understood  in  Matth.,  xxviii,  1,  where  Jesus  is  already  risen  "late  on 
the  Sabbath  day  as  the  first  day  of  the  week  drew  on, ' '  i.  e.,  Saturday 
night,  and  in  the  other  accounts  where  this  event  takes  place  the 
next  morning. 

8  See  Excursus  C. 
21 


322  THE  PROPHET  OF  NAZAEETH 

changed,  did  this  hope  lessen  its  hold.  With  the  estab- 
lishment of  Christianity  as  the  official  religion  of  the 
Roman  empire  men  generally  ceased  to  look  for  an  imme- 
diate return  of  Jesus  to  earth,  and  for  a  Messianic  king- 
dom of  a  thousand  years.  The  term  Christ  was  no  longer 
the  equivalent  of  the  Messiah;  it  meant  the  Son  of  God 
in  a  metaphysical  sense,  the  eternal  Logos,  the  second 
person  of  the  Trinity.  As  God  he  was  omnipresent ;  he 
was  always  near  to  those  who  called  upon  him;  in  the 
eucharist  was  his  real  presence;  the  Church  was  his  rep- 
resentative; this  Church  was  the  kingdom  of  God  on 
earth;  the  kingdom  of  heaven  was  a  celestial  realm 
whither  the  faithful  member  of  the  Church  passed  after 
death  to  behold  his  Saviour  face  to  face.  Beside  this 
new  conception  there  was  no  room  for  the  earlier  view, 
and  no  spiritual  demand  for  it.  On  the  other  hand,  the 
belief  in  the  resurrection  of  Jesus  could  not  be  affected 
by  the  disillusionings  of  history  or  the  changed  concep- 
tion of  the  Christ.  That  the  incarnate  God  had  risen  from 
the  dead  was  less  difficult  to  believe  than  that  he  had  died 
at  all,  and  there  was  no  disposition  to  examine  the  ac- 
counts critically. 

The  influence  of  Jesus  in  the  period  in  which  the  Christ- 
ology  of  the  Church  was  defined  by  the  ecumenic  symbols 
should  not  be  underestimated.  The  Gospels  were  widely 
read,  and  the  strong  impression  of  the  human  personality 
of  Jesus  manifests  itself  not  only  in  the  dissenting  bodies 
that  emphasized  his  humanity,  but  also  in  the  Catholic 
Church,  whose  endeavor  it  was  to  vindicate  his  true  hu- 
manity as  well  as  his  divinity.  It  was  not  merely  an  intel- 
lectual curiosity  to  solve  what  is  at  bottom  a  permanent 
problem  of  thought  that  led  to  the  subtle  distinctions  be- 
tween homoousion  and  homoiousion,  legitimate  as  this 
would  have  been.  It  was  quite  as  much  the  personal  affec- 
tion for  Jesus  inspired  by  the  portrayal  of  his  life  and  the 
presentation  of  his  doctrine  in  the  Gospels.  With  the 
moral  impression  of  a  noble  divine  personality,  who 
stood  as  the  constant  object  of  worship,  fear,  confidence 


THE  HISTOEIC  INFLUENCE  OF  JESUS  323 

and  love,  there  blended  the  elevating  influence  of  a  human 
life  that  inspired  and  called  for  imitation.  While  in  the 
interest  of  historic  truth  greater  discrimination  is  needed 
than  is  usually  found  in  the  claims  made  for  Christianity, 
the  tendency  to  account  for  certain  social  changes  on 
purely  economic  grounds  and  to  eliminate  all  spiritual 
forces  is  apt  to  lead  astray.  The  manumission  of  slaves, 
or  change  from  slavery  to  serfhood,  in  the  Roman  empire, 
was  no  doubt  in  a  large  measure  due  to  the  diminishing 
supply  of  slaves  and  their  consequent  increase  in  value 
after  the  empire  had  reached  its  greatest  territorial  exten- 
sion, as  Gibbon  and  Adam  Smith  have  pointed  out ;  but  it 
would  be  unjust  to  forget  the  moral  and  religious  influ- 
ences of  Stoic  philosophy  and  of  Christianity.  It  was  a 
Stoic,  Dio  Chrysostomus,1  who,  in  the  reign  of  Trajan, 
first  declared  that  slavery  is  contrary  to  the  laws  of  na- 
ture. The  spirit  of  Jesus  still  brooding  over  his  church 
created  a  moral  disposition  that  was  distinctly  favorable 
to  the  emancipation  of  the  slaves.2 

Similarly,  the  great  improvement  of  sexual  morality, 
showing  itself  in  purer  marital  relations  and  in  the  con- 
tinence of  the  monastic  life,  was  to  a  considerable  extent 
the  result  of  causes  not  connected  with  the  life  or  teaching 
of  Jesus.  The  ebb  and  flow  of  physical  life  in  successive 
generations  apparently  causes  periods  of  indifference  and 
aversion  to  pleasure  to  follow  periods  of  over-indulgence 
of  the  appetites.  The  Church  only  inherited  the  Hebrew 
ideal  of  chastity,  and  even  the  monastic  life  had  one  of 
its  roots  in  Judaism,  as  the  communities  of  Essenes  and 
Therapeutae3  testify.  Besides,  the  attitude  of  the  Stoics 
must  be  considered.  But  there  can  be  no  question  that  in 

1  Opera,  ed.  Emperius,  xiv,  xv,  p.  265  ff. 

8  The  Deutero  Pauline  epistles  to  the  Ephesians,  Colossians  and 
Philemon  recognize  the  institution  of  slavery  and  consequently  insist 
upon  the  return  of  fugitive  slaves  to  their  masters,  but  earnestly  urge 
kindly  treatment  and  a  fraternal  spirit. 

3  With  Massebieau,  Conybeare,  Wendiand,  Pfleiderer  and  Bousset, 
the  present  writer  considers  De  vita  covtemplativa  as  a  genuine  work 
of  Philo. 


324  THE  PROPHET  OF  NAZARETH 

two  directions  at  least  the  influence  of  Jesus  was  impor- 
tant. He  had  declared  in  favor  of  the  indissolubility  of 
marriage,  and  he  had  exemplified  celibacy  in  his  own  life 
and  apparently  commended  it  for  the  sake  of  the  king- 
dom of  heaven. 

The  missionary  enterprises  and  crusades  that  charac- 
terize the  earlier  centuries  of  the  Middle  Ages  were,  at 
least  in  part,  due  to  a  sincere  desire  that  Jesus  as  the 
celestial  king  should  reign  over  pagans  and  Muhammadans 
living  in  rebellion  against  him  and  therefore  doomed  to 
perish.  If  the  interests  were  often  those  of  the  Church 
rather  than  of  Jesus,  this  distinction  was  seldom  felt  by 
the  pious  missionary  or  crusader.  That  economic  causes 
operated  in  the  background,  they  never  dreamed.  They 
knew  the  loyalty  of  their  own  hearts  to  their  king  in 
heaven,  whose  law  they  would  impose  upon  the  nations, 
whose  tomb  they  would  rescue  from  the  hands  of  the  infi- 
dels, and  whose  glory  they  would  spread  by  the  words  of 
their  mouth  or  the  blows  of  their  sword.  It  is  impos- 
sible to  recall  the  names  of  Columban  and  Gallus,  of  Em- 
meran  and  Rupert,  of  Boniface  and  Ansgar,  of  Cyril  and 
Methodius,  without  realizing  how  truly  this  missionary 
zeal  could  serve  the  real  cause  of  Jesus.  However  radic- 
ally opposed  to  the  spirit  of  the  gentle  Nazarene  the  con- 
test for  the  empire  of  the  world  between  Christian  Borne 
and  Muhammadan  Baghdad  may  appear,  however  absurd 
the  combination  of  a  cross  on  the  breast  and  a  sword  in 
the  hand,  and  however  lamentable  the  resultant  exclusive- 
ness,  prejudice,  distrust  and  unnatural  relationship  be- 
tween two  great  historic  religions,  it  cannot  be  questioned 
that  the  cross  very  often  meant  the  surrender  of  worldly 
ambition,  wealth  and  pleasure,  the  sacrifice  of  domestic 
happiness,  the  risk  of  life,  the  willing  acceptance  and 
patient  endurance  of  hardship  for  the  sake  of  the  unseen 
king.  The  chivalry  of  the  mediaeval  knight  from  which 
our  modern  treatment  of  woman  so  largely  is  derived  can- 
not be  regarded  as  solely  a  product  of  Christianity,  for 
it  has  a  deep  root  in  the  dreamy  reverence  for  woman  char- 


THE  HISTORIC  INFLUENCE  OF  JESUS  325 

acteristic  of  our  pagan  ancestors.  Yet  it  would  not  have 
become  what  it  was  but  for  the  veneration  accorded  to  the 
Virgin  Mary;  and  though  this  cult  ultimately  goes  back 
to  the  widespread  worship  of  one  or  another  mother  god- 
dess in  the  Roman  empire,  it  was  itself  informed  by  the 
spirit  of  Jesus.  Even  the  papal  contention,  that  there 
is  a  sphere  of  morals  and  religion  in  which  the  consciences 
of  men  ought  not  to  be  subjected  to  the  authority  of 
princes  or  of  civil  government,  reflects  a  thought  of  Jesus. 
Give  to  Caesar  what  belongs  to  Caesar,  but  also  to  God 
what  belongs  to  God.  There  are  diviner  rights  than  those 
of  kings.  Unfortunately,  papacy  itself  in  its  attempt  to 
represent  Jesus  on  earth  did  not  follow  his  leadership  in 
disentangling  itself  from  all  political  ambitions,  and  in 
leaving  conscience  free. 

In  Francis  of  Assisi  another  phase  of  the  influence  of 
Jesus  comes  to  view.  The  man  of  Nazareth  is  taken  as  a 
model  to  be  followed.  His  life  is  to  be  imitated.  His  man- 
ner of  living  is  to  be  copied.  To  be  poor  as  he  and  de- 
pendent on  the  gifts  of  others ;  to  be  unmarried  as  he  and 
continent ;  to  be  homeless  as  he  and  walking  about  among 
men ;  to  be  simple  and  joyous  and  brave  and  earnest  as  he 
and  occupied  in  doing  good— this  is  to  follow  Jesus.  It  is 
a  most  significant  shifting  of  emphasis  from  metaphysical 
speculation  on  his  personality,  appropriation  of  his  saving 
grace  through  sacred  rites,  or  outward  obedience  to  his 
commands,  to  actual  reproduction  of  his  life.  There  is 
much  that  is  external  and  artificial  in  this  imitation,  doing 
violence  to  individuality.  But  there  is  more  that  is  of 
permanent  value.  For  it  is  in  this  direction  of  charac- 
ter influencing  character  that  the  truest  leadership  of 
Jesus  is  likely  to  be  found.  The  spiritual  kinsmen  of 
Francis  of  Assisi  are  chiefly  to  be  looked  for  among  the 
mystics.  Men  like  Gerhard  Groote,  Johann  Tauler, 
Thomas  a  Kempis,  are  only  some  of  the  best  known  repre- 
sentatives of  large  groups  who  before  the  Reformation 
discerned,  with  more  or  less  clearness,  that  the  greatest 
service  Jesus  can  render  as  a  leader  of  the  sons  of  men 


326  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZAEETH 


consists  in  the  moral  influence  of  his  spirit  and  character 
upon  the  inner  life. 

The  three  great  movements  of  organized  dissent  in  the 
sixteenth  century,  the  Lutheran,  the  Zwinglian,  and  the 
Baptist,  reveal  in  different  ways  the  leadership  of  Jesus 
acknowledged  by  them  all.  Against  the  prevalent  idea 
that  man  could  earn  his  own  salvation  by  good  works  hav- 
ing the  value  of  assets  to  his  credit,  or  purchase  it  from 
the  supererogatory  works  of  other  men,  or  secure  it  by 
such  purchases  made  on  his  behalf  by  friends  or  relatives, 
Luther  maintained,  in  accordance  with  Paul  and  Augus- 
tine, that  man  is  justified  by  faith  only,  without  works, 
through  the  grace  of  God.  The  object  of  this  faith  was 
Jesus  Christ  for  whose  personality,  after  some  hesitancy, 
he  adopted  the  definition  of  the  Catholic  symbols.  The 
great  importance  of  this  " material  principle"  of  the  ref- 
ormation lies  in  the  fact  that  it  removes  all  priestly  media- 
tion between  the  soul  and  Christ,  makes  salvation  depend- 
ent solely  upon  a  man's  relation  to  his  divine  Redeemer, 
and  does  away  with  the  idea  that  he  can  merit  it  by  his 
good  works.  Luther,  indeed,  did  not  carry  out  this  doc- 
trine to  its  natural  consequences,  inasmuch  as  he  ascribed 
saving  value  to  infant  baptism  without  a  conscious  act  of 
appropriation  of  Christ  by  faith  and,  in  the  case  of  the 
eucharist,  assumed  a  communication  of  the  flesh  and 
blood  of  Christ,  "in,  with  and  under"  the  elements,  regard- 
less of  faith.  The  ' '  formal  principle ' '  was  the  recognition 
of  the  Bible  alone  as  the  supreme  authority.  In  judging 
of  canonicity,  however,  he  was  inclined  to  apply  the  test 
of  agreement  with  the  material  principle,  and  to  rule  out 
such  books  as  Canticles,  James,  and  Revelation.  At  first 
he  enlisted  the  warm  sympathies  of  the  common  people. 
But  his  attitude  in  siding  with  the  princes  in  the  upris- 
ing of  the  peasants  had  a  tendency  to  alienate  the  poorer 
classes.  The  rulers,  however,  helped  him  to  realize  in  a 
measure  his  ideal  of  a  Christian  state,  which  could  serve 
as  a  bulwark  against  the  aggressions  of  the  papacy,  and 
guarantee  the  permanency  of  his  ecclesiastical  reforma- 


THE  HISTOKIC  INFLUENCE  OF  JESUS  327 

tion.  In  making  the  theological  faculties  at  the  univer- 
sities guardians  of  the  faith,  and  placing  the  young  men 
to  be  educated  for  the  ministry  at  these  centers  of  varied 
learning,  he  gave  at  once  authority  to  the  specialist,  and 
made  provision  against  an  one-sided  development.  Thus 
Luther  labored  according  to  the  light  he  had,  and  laid 
the  foundations  better  than  several  generations  succeed- 
ing him  knew.  If  he  lacked  the  self-control,  the  gentle- 
ness of  spirit,  the  catholicity  of  sympathy,  and  the  depth 
of  intuition  that  some  of  his  fellow-laborers  possessed,  he 
loved  the  truth  he  saw,  had  the  courage  of  his  convictions, 
showed  much  practical  discernment,  and  sought  by  all 
means  to  enhance  the  power,  in  state  and  church,  of  the 
divinely -human  Master  whom  he  served  in  sincerity.1 

Zwingli  resembled  Luther  in  many  respects ;  his  concep- 
tion of  the  Christ  was  similar;  his  loyalty  to  Jesus  was 
equally  marked.  But  his  outlook  upon  life  was  broader 
and  his  spirit  freer.  This  is  manifest  in  his  estimate  of 
the  religious  character  of  Pindar,  Plato  and  Seneca,  in  his 
assertion  that  the  divine  spirit  was  not  limited  to  Pales- 
tine, and  in  his  conception  of  the  Lord 's  Supper  as  simply 
a  memorial  meal.  In  the  manner  of  his  approach  to  a 
theological  question  Luther  instinctively  felt  a  spirit  dif- 

1  This  estimate  of  Luther 's  character  remains  unchanged  after  the 
perusal  of  Denifle 's  Luther  und  das  Lutherthum,  1904.  There  was 
an  element  of  coarseness  and  sensuality  in  Luther,  accentuated  by  the 
reaction  against  an  unnatural  mode  of  life.  If  Protestant  theologians 
have  been  too  prone  to  gloss  over  certain  facts  in  the  life  of  Luther 
and  apologize,  on  flimsy  grounds,  for  his  vulgarity  of  speech  and  nar- 
rowness of  judgment,  Denifle  lacks  the  ability  to  perceive  his  real 
greatness,  which  is  more  serious.  It  may  be  questioned  whether, 
without  Luther,  we  should  have  advanced  in  four  centuries  beyond 
Denifle,  whose  judgment  upon  Luther  reminds  of  Luther,  but  has  in  it 
no  promise  of  larger  views.  Denifle 's  charge  against  Luther  that  he 
abandoned  the  monastic  ideal  and  broke  his  vows  will  not  disturb  the 
world.  That  he  abandoned  the  common  people  and  the  cause  of  social 
progress  is  a  more  serious  matter.  But  this  was  largely  due  to  his 
early  training,  which  rendered  it  difficult,  if  not  impossible,  for  him  to 
conceive  of  a  state  whose  members  were  not  from  infancy  forced  to  be 
Christians,  and  Christians  of  a  certain  type. 


328  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZAEETH 

f erent  from  his  own.  It  is  in  harmony  with  this  general 
attitude  that  the  question  of  infant  baptism  seriously  dis- 
turbed him,  and  he  seems  to  have  been  led  to  retain  the  prac- 
tice by  considerations  of  the  far-reaching  effects  upon  civil 
society  of  adopting  the  Baptist  position  rather  than  by 
theological  arguments.  As  he  insisted  upon  a  more  rad- 
ical reformation  of  the  church  service,  so  he  put  more 
emphasis  upon  the  reform  of  social  institutions  by  the 
people  itself.  While  Calvin's  logical  mind  developed  the 
material  principle  by  accentuating  the  doctrine  of  predes- 
tination and  the  symbolical  character  of  the  ordinances, 
and  strengthened  the  formal  principle  by  an  exegesis  that 
was  remarkably  objective,  yet  appeared  to  succeed  in 
exhibiting  one  doctrinal  content  in  all  parts  of  the  canon, 
his  activity  as  a  practical  reformer  showed  the  same 
tendency  to  democracy  tempered  with  theocracy.  There 
can  be  no  question  as  to  the  genuineness  of  his  desire  to 
see  the  will  of  his  Master  dominant  in  the  life  of  the  Chris- 
tian community.  That  without  the  use  of  force  the  au- 
thority of  Jesus  cannot  be  maintained,  is  an  inference  that 
he  could  not  avoid  drawing  from  his  conception  of  the 
functions  of  government  and  the  character  of  the  church.1 
But  it  is  significant,  in  view  of  the  subsequent  develop- 
ment of  political  life  in  the  various  countries  affected  by 
the  Reformation,  that  Luther  and  his  colleagues  leaned  on 
princes  by  whose  aid  they  were  able  to  carry  out  their 
work,  and  whose  authority  over  their  subjects  they  em- 

1  The  position  of  authority  accorded  to  Calvin  in  Geneva  seems  to 
have  caused  a  confusion  from  which  his  mind  did  not  suffer,  at  least 
to  so  great  an  extent,  in  1532,  when  he  wrote  his  commentary  on 
Seneca's  De  Caritate.  In  the  case  of  Serve tus,  his  judgment  was 
further  warped  by  wounded  pride  and  personal  resentment,  as  his 
own  statements  unmistakably  prove.  It  would  be  wrong  to  hold  his 
age  responsible  for  his  lamentable  error.  Yet  the  most  powerful  tra- 
ditions and  the  strongest  currents  of  thought  in  that  period  unques- 
tionably rendered  it  difficult  for  him  to  reach  the  lofty  position  of  a 
Balthasar  Hubmaier,  a  Hans  Denck,  or  a  Sebastian  Chateillon,  which 
would  have  prevented  him  from  playing  such  a  disgraceful  part  in  the 
judicial  murder  of  Servetus.  The  great  reformer  has  certainly  a 
right  to  be  judged  by  his  best,  and  not  by  his  worst. 


THE  HISTOEIC  INFLUENCE  OF  JESUS  329 

phasized,  while  Zwingli,  Calvin  and  their  associates  leaned 
chiefly  on  the  burghers,  and  maintained  the  rights  of  the 
people  against  unjust  rulers. 

The  Baptists,  as  a  rule,  rejected  both  the  material  and 
the  formal  principle.  Characteristic  of  the  whole  move- 
ment were  the  emphasis  upon  character  and  the  doctrine 
of  "the  inner  light."  With  the  current  notion  of 
"works"  as  a  commodity,  with  a  fixed  value  on  the 
ecclesiastical  exchange  or  in  the  celestial  court,  the  Bap- 
tists had  no  sympathy.  In  fact  their  leading  theologians 
were  at  pains  to  remove  the  remnant  of  this  system  of 
salvation  by  negotiable  works  of  merit.  To  Denck  and 
Tiziano  faith  did  not  mean  belief  in  a  transference  of 
man's  guilt  to  Christ  and  an  imputation  of  Christ's  merits 
to  man,  but  trust  in  God  and  obedience  to  his  laws,  a  con- 
fidence and  obedience  impressively  exemplified  by  the 
man  Jesus  of  Nazareth.  This  faith,  they  held,  could  never 
exist,  or  even  be  conceived,  without  works.  They  dis- 
carded all  mercantile  and  forensic  views  of  the  atonement, 
and  instead  of  justification  as  a  reward  for  believing 
preached  righteousness  of  life  and  works  of  kindness  as 
the  natural  result  of  the  indwelling  principle  of  love, 
whose  value  and  power  may  be  seen  in  some  lives  more 
distinctly  than  in  others,  and  with  especial  clearness  in 
that  of  Jesus.  According  to  these  thinkers,  man  is  not 
in  need  of  being  saved  from  the  devil  or  from  an  ever- 
lasting hell,  for  they  did  not  believe  in  the  existence  of 
either,  but  from  selfishness  and  ignorance.  By  "the 
inner  light"  Denck  understood  the  direct  illumination  of 
every  human  mind,  according  to  its  capacity,  by  the 
indwelling  divinity.  This  light  enables  man  to  discern 
the  truth  in  the  sacred  books  or  elsewhere.  Following  it 
holy  men  of  old  spoke  as  they  were  moved  by  the  Spirit, 
and  through  all  ages  divine  truth  continues  to  be  revealed 
to  men.  By  placing  the  authority  of  the  inner  light  above 
that  of  the  Scriptures,  these  early  Baptists  were  naturally 
led  to  recognize  not  only  the  right  of  private  interpreta- 
tion of  the  Bible,  and  the  consequent  diversity  of  beliefs, 


330  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZAEETH 

but  also  the  propriety  of  Biblical  criticism,  and  the  liberty 
of  prophesying  new  things.  Denck's  distinction  between 
the  permanently  valuable  and  the  only  temporarily  sig- 
nificant in  the  New  Testament  as  well  as  in  the  Old  Testa- 
ment, leading  him  apparently  before  his  death  to  regret 
that  he  at  one  time  had  attached  an  abiding  importance 
even  to  adult  baptism,  is  an  instructive  example.  The 
recognition  by  Servetus  of  at  least  a  primary  reference 
of  the  supposed  Messianic  prophecies  in  the  Old  Testa- 
ment to  contemporaneous  events  and  personalities  is  also 
significant.  The  accounts  of  Giuliano  of  Milan,  indicat- 
ing that  in  Baptist  circles  the  authenticity  of  the  Fourth 
Gospel  was  denied,  the  opening  chapters  of  Matthew  and 
Luke  and  some  chapters  in  Mark  were  regarded  as  inter- 
polations, and  some  of  the  Pauline  writings  were  ques- 
tioned, affords  another  illustration.  From  the  principle 
of  the  inner  light  follows  also  the  conception  of  the  church 
as  a  local  society  composed  of  persons  who  have  been 
enlightened.  The  rejection  of  infant  baptism  was  there- 
fore not  exclusively  caused  by  the  absence  of  New  Testa- 
ment precept  or  precedent.  A  church  thus  constituted 
could  not  be  co-extensive  with  the  state,  or  civil  society. 
It  was  a  spiritual  brotherhood,  living  in  the  world,  though 
not  of  the  world.  Its  aims  and  purposes  were  connected 
with  the  teaching  and  example  of  Jesus.  Some  of  his 
ideas  such  as  those  concerning  the  overcoming  of  evil 
with  good,  war,  oath-taking,  judging,  and  private  wealth, 
the  value  of  the  simple,  trustful,  joyous  life,  the  coming 
of  a  better  social  order,  the  kingdom  of  heaven  on  earth, 
were  widely  adopted  among  the  Baptists;  and  the  testi- 
mony of  their  enemies,  who  often  ascribed  their  apparent 
virtues  to  the  inscrutable  craftiness  of  Satan,  the  char- 
acter of  their  preserved  writings,  their  gentle  demeanor 
during  lives  filled  with  severest  trials  and  persecutions, 
and  the  noble  courage  with  which  they  met  the  martyr's 
death,  show  how  deeply  they  were  influenced  by  his  spirit. 
Thus  it  is  possible  to  observe,  in  the  case  of  a  great  his- 
toric movement,  whose  significance  becomes  more  mani- 


THE  HISTORIC  INFLUENCE  OF  JESUS  331 

fest  in  proportion  as  the  archives  of  Europe  yield  up  their 
secrets,  whether  the  real  leadership  of  Jesus  decreases  or 
is  enhanced  by  the  recognition  of  his  purely  human 
character. 

On  the  other  hand,  it  was  only  natural  that  the  Baptist 
position  should  be  felt  to  be  a  menace  both  to  church  and 
state.  At  first  sight  it  might  appear  very  harmless  that  a 
good  man  prefers  tilling  his  soil  to  killing  his  fellows, 
weaving  his  cloth  to  wearing  the  ermine,  telling  the  truth 
to  swearing  an  oath,  bearing  with  patience  insult  and 
injury  to  demanding  the  punishment  of  his  assailant,  shar- 
ing his  good  things  with  others  to  heaping  up  wealth  for 
himself,  caring  for  his  child  to  sprinkling  it  with  water, 
loving  and  imitating  Jesus  to  praising  and  describing 
him.  But  if  this  man  should  be  right,  society  would  be 
wrong  in  slaying  its  enemies,  condemning  its  criminals, 
binding  its  citizens  with  oaths,  bringing  its  grievances  to 
courts,  hoarding  its  treasures,  saving  its  infants  by  bap- 
tism and  its  adults  by  formulas,  sending  its  heretics  to 
hell,  and  promising  its  saints  heaven  through  the  merits 
of  the  God-man.  In  reality,  his  gentle  life,  in  spite  of  its 
innocent  appearance,  was  a  bold  challenge  hurled  at  all 
that  was  high  and  exalted  among  men,  at  the  throne  and 
the  altar,  the  bench  and  the  cathedra,  the  knight  and  the 
bishop,  the  man  of  lineage  and  the  man  of  wealth.  The 
challenge  was  accepted,  and  in  a  few  decades  these  quiet 
seekers  after  a  country  of  their  own  had  been  hounded 
to  death,  burned  at  the  stake,  or  drowned  in  deep  waters. 
Then,  in  Gothic  cathedrals,  amid  incense  and  gold  and 
treasures  of  art,  Te  Deums  were  sung,  and  in  houses  of 
worship  but  recently  deprived  of  all  emblems  or  images 
thanks  were  offered  for  the  salvation  of  society  to  the 
man  who  many  centuries  ago  had  himself  for  the  same 
crime  been  hanged  upon  a  cross. 

It  cannot  be  denied  that  in  the  mother  church  the  in- 
fluence of  the  prophet  of  Nazareth  was  in  some  directions 
preserved  and  extended  through  the  Society  of  Jesus. 
Its  spiritual  discipline,  its  educational  system,  and  its  mis- 


THE  PROPHET  OF  NAZABETH 


sionary  zeal  were  not  only  the  most  efficient  means  of  re- 
forming the  Catholic  Church  and  enhancing  the  power 
of  the  papacy,  but  also  became  instrumental  in  making 
the  name  of  Jesus  known  in  distant  lands,  his  life  re- 
garded as  an  example,  and  his  authority  recognized  with 
unwavering  fidelity.  Never  since  the  days  of  the  Stoics 
had  the  Western  world  seen  an  order  of  men  exhibiting  at 
once  such  talents  and  learning  and  such  masterly  self- 
control,  indifference  to  outward  circumstance  and  poise 
of  character  as  those  who  regularly  drew  their  inspiration 
from  the  Spiritual  Exercises  of  Ignatius  Loyola.  Clearer 
than  other  reformers  the  leaders  of  this  society  recognized 
that,  if  the  authority  of  Jesus  is  to  be  paramount  over  a 
human  life,  the  training  must  begin  in  childhood  and 
include  the  heart  and  the  will  as  well  as  the  intellect.  To 
their  missionary  work  in  Asia,  Africa  and  America, 
they  brought  a  learning,  an  adaptability,  a  tact  and  a  de- 
votion, that  for  a  time  crowned  their  labors  with  re- 
markable success.  In  some  measure  this  success  was  no 
doubt  due  to  the  method  adopted  by  Xavier,  Valignani, 
Ricci  and  other  missionaries  of  assuming  the  dress  and 
customs  of  the  natives,  and  of  adjusting  the  presentation 
of  Christian  doctrine  to  already  existing  religious  ideas. 
There  is  no  reason  for  questioning,  on  this  ground,  their 
purpose  to  bring  their  converts  to  a  full  acceptance  of  the 
teaching  of  Jesus  as  they  understood  it,  and  the  readiness 
with  which  for  his  sake  they  suffered  martyrdom  testifies 
to  their  sincerity.  But  that  which  was  the  strength  of 
this  society  also  constituted  its  weakness.  It  derived  its 
very  existence  from  the  desire  of  following  Jesus.  A  Life 
of  Jesus  and  The  Imitation  of  Christ  by  Thomas  a  Kempis 
made  a  missionary  of  the  soldier  Ignatius.  But  while 
absolute  obedience  to  the  will  of  Christ  as  interpreted  by 
his  apostles  or  their  successors  may  make  an  organiza- 
tion very  powerful,  its  members  are  deprived  of  that  free- 
dom of  conscience  and  moral  initiative  without  which 
there  can  be  no  healthy  religious  development.  And 
while  a  facile  adaptation  of  means  in  themselves  ques- 


THE  HISTOKIC  INFLUENCE  OF  JESUS  333 

tionable  to  a  high  end  may  be  fruitful  of  accomplishment, 
the  end  itself  is  apt  to  become  unconsciously  lowered  and 
the  work  achieved  to  receive  a  taint. 

The  inherent  weakness  and  gradual  deterioration  of  the 
Society  of  Jesus  called  forth  within  the  Church  itself  a 
significant  protest.  Whether  or  not  Cornelius  Jansen's 
Augustinus  contained  in  germ  the  views  attributed  to  him. 
there  can  be  no  doubt  as  to  the  Calvinistic  tendency  of 
thought  among  the  Port-Royalists.  Of  more  importance, 
however,  were  the  independence  of  mind,  moral  discern- 
ment and  spiritual  temper  of  Antoine  Arnauld,  Jean 
Hamon,  Angelique  Arnauld  and  Pierre  Nicole,  and  the 
system  of  education  that  trained  for  the  world  a  Racine 
and  a  Pascal.  Voltaire  rightly  regarded  Nicole's  Treat- 
ise on  the  Means  of  Preserving  Peace  with  Men1  as  a 
master-piece  without  an  equal  in  antiquity.  Original  as 
are  the  lines  of  inquiry  pursued  in  this  profoundly  sig- 
nificant work,  the  influence  of  the  thought  and  spirit  of 
Jesus  is  quite  unmistakable. 

Whatever  the  historic  connection  may  have  been  between 
the  radical  party  of  the  reformation  period  and  the  quiet- 
ists  of  the  seventeenth  century,  the  latter  share  with  the 
former  a  certain  approach  to  the  Roman  Catholic  position 
on  the  one  hand,  and  a  decided  tendency  toward  ration- 
alism on  the  other.  The  radical  bias  is  already  visible 
to  some  extent  in  Michael  Molinos,  Madame  de  Guyon, 
and  Jean  de  Labadie;  in  the  Quakers  it  becomes  more 
marked  and  of  greater  practical  significance,  and  in  the 
later  Pietists  it  develops  into  full-fledged  rationalism. 
By  their  emphasis  upon  grace  and  good  works  and  a  spir- 
itual enlightenment  not  confined  to  the  authors  of  the 
Bible,  George  Fox  and  William  Penn,  the  Princess  Eliza- 
beth and  Anna  Maria  van  Schurmann,  Jacob  Spener, 
August  Francke,  and  their  successors  drew  nearer  to  the 
Catholic  attitude  than  to  Lutheran  and  Calvinistic  prin- 
ciples. In  England  it  was  especially  the  state  that  felt 

1  Pierre  Nicole,  Traite  des  moyens  de  conserver  la  paix  avec  les 
hommes  in  Essais  de  morale,  Paris,  1671. 


334  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZAEETH 

itself  menaced  by  the  men  who  refused  to  swear,  to  "bow 
and  scrape,"  to  use  the  plural  pronoun  in  addressing  their 
superiors,  and  to  bear  arms.  In  view  of  such  conduct, 
which  was  rightly  considered  as  endangering  existing 
social  institutions,  the  objection  to  "steeple  houses"  and 
a  hired  ministry,  the  distrust  of  the  trinitarian  formula 
and  all  creeds,  the  rejection  of  baptism  in  any  form  as  well 
as  the  eucharist,  the  doctrine  of  the  inner  light,  and  the 
inclination  to  universalism,  could  only  be  regarded  as  of 
secondary  importance,  however  serious  in  themselves. 
In  filling  its  horrible  jails  with  men  and  women  who  had 
committed  no  crime,  society  only  sought  to  protect  itself 
against  what  it  felt  to  be  very  grave  dangers.  It  was  not 
at  all  conscious  of  the  fact  that  the  Quakers  in  reality 
followed  the  leadership  of  Jesus  in  adopting  some  of  his 
teachings  that  had  been  generally  discarded,  but  to  which 
he  had  himself  attached  great  importance. 

In  Germany  it  was  particularly  the  Lutheran  church 
that  found  itself  threatened  by  the  pietistic  movement. 
The  opposition  to  the  established  clergy  and  the  insistence 
upon  a  personal  religious  experience  on  the  part  of  the 
religious  teacher,  the  dependence  upon  private  judgment 
leading  to  rejection  of  the  creeds  and  critical  treatment 
of  the  Bible,  the  desire  for  a  broader  fellowship  of  Chris- 
tian churches  regardless  of  dogma,  the  indifference  to  the 
sacraments  and  the  active  endeavor  to  gain  influence  in 
chair  and  pulpit,  made  pietism  a  foe  with  which  the 
church  had  to  cope  seriously.  In  more  than  one  field  the 
Pietists  signalized  an  inevitable  reversal  of  judgment. 
The  last  began  to  appear  as  the  first.  Gottfried  Arnold1 
depicted  the  history  of  the  church  in  such  a  manner  that 
the  heretics  were  justified  by  their  own  suppressed  writ- 
ings, and  bore  off  the  palm  of  victory  over  the  majorities 
that  had  condemned  and  crushed  them.  In  his  defense 
of  Pietism  against  the  common  charge  of  hostility  to  cul- 

1  Ketzergeschichte,  1700. 


THE  HISTOEIC  INFLUENCE  OF  JESUS  335 

ture,  Dippel1  subjected  what  had  been  regarded  as  erudi- 
tion to  a  searching  criticism,  and  with  rare  insight  placed 
by  the  side  of  theology,  within  the  sphere  of  erudite  learn- 
ing and  liberal  arts,  jurisprudence  and  medicine,  chemis- 
try, metallurgy  and  mining,  mathematics,  industrial  arts, 
agriculture,  cattle-breeding  and  horticulture,  while  dis- 
counting the  value  to  science  and  society  of  certain  phases 
of  theology,  philosophy  and  jurisprudence.  Edelmann2 
sought  the  value  of  Christianity  and  its  chief  claim  to 
the  attention  of  men,  not  in  its  alleged  supernatural  char- 
acter, but  in  its  rationality.  Thus  the  fruit  of  a  long  de- 
velopment of  thought  in  England,  in  which  not  only  the 
cultivators  of  the  natural  sciences,  the  philosophers  and 
the  deists  had  participated,  but  also  the  theologians  and 
apologists  whose  aim  it  had  been  to  reconcile  reason  and 
revelation,  was  transplanted  into  German  soil.  From 
Herrnhut  Zinzendorf  directed  a  foreign  missionary  work, 
not  relying  on  force  or  diplomacy,  and  not  seeking  the 
glory  and  aggrandizement  of  a  church,  but  trusting  to  the 
Spirit  and  the  Scriptures,  and  undertaken  solely  in  the 
interest  of  the  non-Christian  peoples. 

The  Quietistic  movement  had  its  serious  limitations,  but 
it  was  characterized  by  a  strong  personal  devotion  to 
Jesus  and  his  teaching.  If,  nevertheless,  its  subjectivity 
inevitably  led  to  a  more  and  more  pronounced  rational- 
ism, the  question  naturally  arises  whether  a  further  de- 
velopment of  these  radical  tendencies  would  permit  the 
continuance  at  all  of  such  a  relation  to  Jesus.  At  first 
sight  the  symbolical  interpretation  affected  by  the  great 
German  philosophers,  and  widely  adopted  by  theologians, 
would  seem  to  put  this  in  doubt.  Carrying  out  a  sugges- 
tion of  Spinoza3  that  it  is  not  necessary  to  know  Christ 
according  to  the  flesh,  but  that  no  man  can  be  saved  with- 
out a  knowledge  of  the  eternal  Son  of  God,  the  divine 

1  Weg-Weis&r  sum  verlohrnen  Licht  und  Recht,  etc.,  durch  Christi- 
anum  Democritum,  1704,  Vorrede. 

2  Die  GottlicKkeit  tier  Vernunft,  1740. 

'Epistola  XXI,  Hagae,  in  Nov.,  1675,  ed.  Bruder,  II,  195. 


336  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZAEETH 

wisdom  manifesting  itself  everywhere  but  especially  in 
Jesus  Christ,  Kant1  drew  a  distinction  between  the  his- 
toric Jesus  and  the  archetypal,  ideal  man.  According  to 
him,  the  idea  of  a  perfect  humanity  which  is  present  with 
God  from  all  eternity  stands  before  the  consciousness  of 
man  as  an  ideal  which  it  is  his  moral  duty  to  follow. 
Though  it  is  possible  that  this  ideal  has  once  been  real- 
ized, faith  does  not  depend  upon  this  possibility ;  and  if  in 
Jesus  the  divine  idea  became  a  reality,  it  was  not  through 
a  supernatural  birth  or  other  miracles,  but  through  a  life 
in  harmony  with  the  divine  pattern.  Horst2  looked  upon 
the  narratives  of  the  virgin  birth,  the  miracles,  the  resur- 
rection and  the  ascension,  not  as  history,  but  as  poetry, 
setting  forth  an  ideally  conceived  humanity,  without  the 
aid  of  which  Jesus  could  not  have  been  raised  out  of  the 
common  lot  into  an  ideal  attained,  and  yet  again  possible 
to  attain.  Hegel's  theology  shows  the  same  tendency  to- 
ward symbolism.  When  he  suggests  that  the  human 
being  who  manifests  the  truth  that  God  is  man  and  man 
is  divine  might  be  said  to  have  the  divine  Spirit  for  his 
father  and  a  human  mother,  inasmuch  as  he  unites  into 
one  the  transcendent  divine  nature  and  the  sense-bound 
human  self,  it  is  evident  that  he  translates  the  language 
of  mythology  into  the  language  of  philosophy,  sacrificing 
the  historical  character  of  the  virgin  birth.  And  his 
treatment  of  the  resurrection  reveals  the  same  peculiari- 
ties. But  as  his  doctrine  of  the  historical  development  of 
nations  could  not  fail  to  direct  attention  to  the  difficulty 
of  assuming  a  fixed  ideal  of  humanity  or  even  the  possi- 
bility of  its  realization  in  an  individual,  it  is  not  strange 
that,  in  an  age  strongly  influenced  by  cosmopolitan  ideas, 
the  thought  should  arise  and  win  favor  that  the  true 
Christ,  the  real  Son  of  God,  to  whom  alone  the  doctrines 
deduced  from  the  gospel  can  be  applied,  is  the  human  race. 
Humanity  is  the  child  of  the  invisible  father,  the  spirit, 

1  Die  Religion  innerJialb  der  Grenzen  der  "blossen  Vernunft,  1793,  ed. 
Hortenstein,  VI,  156,  217,  227  al. 

2  Museum  fur  Religionswissenschaft,  1804,  p.  755. 


THE  HISTORIC  INFLUENCE  OF  JESUS  337 

and  the  visible  mother,  nature;  it  is  the  wonder-worker 
through  whose  power  nature  is  gradually  subdued  and 
made  subservient  to  the  Spirit ;  it  is  sinless  inasmuch  as  no 
blame  can  be  attached  to  the  general  course  of  historic 
development  or  to  the  race  as  a  whole,  but  only  to  the 
individual;  it  dies,  arises  from  the  dead  and  ascends  to 
heaven,  in  that  the  natural  yields  to  the  spiritual,  the  out- 
ward separation  of  nations  and  classes  ceases  in  the  higher 
unity  of  the  race,  and  the  mortal  is  thus  swallowed  up  in 
immortality.  The  man  who  believes  in  this  Christ,  and  in 
sincere  faith  lives  and  dies  for  humanity,  is  saved.1 

But  whether  the  term  "  Christ "  was  used  to  designate 
the  ideal  human  personality,  or  the  human  race  in  its 
gradual  realization  of  its  ideal,  the  distinction  between 
the  Jesus  of  history  and  the  Christ  of  the  creeds  would 
apparently  tend  to  eliminate  the  significance  of  the  for- 
mer. This,  however,  was  not  the  case.  As  the  miraculous 
element  disappeared  from  the  life  of  Jesus,  his  teaching 
and  example  claimed  more  attention.  There  was,  indeed, 
a  marked  disposition  to  reduce  his  teaching  to  the  level 
of  the  generally  accepted  moral  maxims  of  the  day.  Yet 
these  were  themselves  in  a  large  measure  the  product  oi 
his  influence,  and  were  in  advance  of  the  ordinary  conduct 
of  men.  The  fact  that  his  life  was  relieved  of  its  miracu- 
lous features  also  rendered  his  virtues  more  real,  and  fos- 
tered a  desire  to  emulate  them,  while  emphasis  upon  the 
duty  of  following  the  highest  ideal,  whether  it  had  ever 
been  realized  or  not,  removed  the  anxiety  to  produce  a 
mere  outward  copy  of  his  life. 

It  cannot  be  denied  that  these  concepts  of  ideal  hu- 
manity suffered  from  a  certain  artificiality.  The  ideal 
that  one  man  should  seek  to  realize  can  obviously  not  be 
identical  with  that  which  another  man  should  set  before 
himself.  Beautiful  and  significant  as  the  myths  are  that 
cluster  about  the  life  of  Jesus  in  the  gospels,  they  do  not 

1  Such  ideas  are  found  in  the  first  edition  of  Strauss 's  Leben  Jesu, 
1835,  in  the  Leichtfassliche  Bearbeltung  des  Lebens  Jesu  von  Dr. 
Strauss,  Ziirich,  1841,  and  elsewhere. 


338  THE  PKOPHET  OF  NAZARETH 

naturally  lend  themselves  as  terms  for  the  description  of 
the  collective  life  of  man  on  earth.  Already  the  descrip- 
tion of  the  church  as  a  collective  Christ  in  I  Cor.  xii,  12, 
and  in  Augustine's  famous  comment,  Totus  Christus,  caput 
et  membra,  threatened  to  deprive  the  term  of  its  natural 
connotation,  but  it  at  least  suggested  an  ideal  society. 
Applied  to  the  human  race,  it  neither  indicated  a  tran- 
scendent human  personality  nor  a  nobler  form  of  social 
life,  but  the  actual  course  of  human  history,  or  at  best  its 
upward  tendency.  If  the  welding  together  of  the  two 
names,  Jesus  and  Christ,  had  originally  caused  a  theolog- 
ical development  entirely  foreign  to  the  thought  of  the 
Galilean  prophet,  their  drifting  apart  seemed  to  signalize 
a  new  growth  of  Christological  speculation.  But  though 
the  symbolical  interpretation  of  Biblical  language  and 
ecclesiastical  terms  conveniently  served  to  hide  the  real 
thought,  and  to  disguise  its  distance  from  the  accepted 
standards  of  faith,  it  was  a  relief  alike  to  the  inquiring 
intellect  and  the  religious  sentiment  to  be  brought  back 
from  vague  abstractions  to  the  life  of  Jesus  by  historical 
criticism.  The  long  and  painstaking  investigations,  car- 
ried on  with  ever  increasing  precision  of  method,  a  keen 
and  cultivated  historic  sense,  and  a  deepening  religious 
appreciation,  have  not  been  in  vain. 

Much  is  left  to  be  done ;  many  problems  still  await  their 
satisfactory  solution,  and  many  fresh  problems  have  arisen 
as  knowledge  has  advanced ;  not  a  few  questions  of  great 
importance  are  still  subject  to  serious  debate  among  inde- 
pendent and  competent  investigators ;  some  things  historic 
research  will,  in  all  probability,  never  ascertain.  But 
there  is  an  unmistakable  drift  of  responsible  opinion  to 
certain  conclusions.  After  a  very  thoroughgoing  criti- 
cism that  has  taken  nothing  for  granted,  but  conscien- 
tiously examined  everything  within  its  observation,  it  is 
possible  to-day  to  state,  with  assurance,  that  Jesus  of 
Nazareth  once  lived  among  men,  approximately  when  he 
lived,  what  were  some  of  the  external  circumstances  of  his 
life,  what  was  the  general  trend  of  his  teaching,  how  his 


THE  HISTOEIC  INFLUENCE  OF  JESUS  339 

personality  affected  different  classes,  and  how  he  came  to 
his  death.  Out  of  the  mists  of  tradition  enveloping  him  his 
majestic  figure  rises  and  stands  out  in  bold  relief  against 
the  background  of  his  time.  All  fair-minded  men  will 
grant  that  he  is  worthy  of  respectful  attention,  admira- 
tion, and  love.  Those  who  have  earnestly  sought  to  be- 
come acquainted  with  him,  allowing  his  thought  to  influ- 
ence theirs,  his  manner  of  life  to  inspire  them,  and  his 
spirit  to  touch  their  hearts,  will  gladly  confess  that  they 
have  found  in  this  son  of  man  something  that  the  Christ 
of  the  creeds  could  not  give,  that  to  them  the  old  con- 
ception, with  all  its  splendor,  is  no  longer  glorious  be- 
cause of  the  surpassing  glory  of  the  new.  As  they  look 
back  over  the  centuries  that  have  passed  since  his  death, 
it  is  possible  for  them  to  trace  to  some  extent  the  influence 
of  this  real,  historical  personality,  obscured  but  never 
quite  concealed  by  tradition,  alongside  with  that  of  the 
fictitious  personality  created  by  the  identification  of  Jesus 
with  the  Jewish  Messiah  and  the  Divine  Logos.  The  for- 
mer seems  to  them  to  have  been  more  valuable  in  the  past, 
and  to  hold  more  promise  for  the  future. 


CHAPTER  XIII 

THE  PEESENT  PEOBLEM 

Undoubtedly,  the  traditional  conception  of  Jesus  will  long 
continue  in  the  world,  and  through  it  his  power  will  be  felt 
as  of  yore.  There  seems  to  be  no  reason  for  expecting  a 
very  marked  change  of  attitude  either  in  the  Roman  or  in 
the  Greek  Catholic  Church  on  matters  of  doctrine  that  are 
deemed  of  fundamental  importance,  and  are  closely  con- 
nected with  the  cult.  But  while  the  doctrinal  system  may 
be  left  substantially  intact,  there  are  forces  already  at 
work,  especially  in  the  Roman  Catholic  Church,  that  cannot 
fail  to  bring  about  noteworthy  modifications  of  intellectual 
attitude  and  spiritual  temper.  The  increasing  demand  for 
advanced  education,  and  the  difficulty  of  competing  with 
well-equipped  Protestant  institutions  of  learning,  will  make 
it  a  matter  of  growing  concern  that  Catholic  scholarship 
shall  be  of  the  highest  order.  In  course  of  time  it  must 
become  apparent  to  those  who  have  the  welfare  of  the 
Church  at  heart  that  the  greatest  obstacle  to  the  develop- 
ment of  such  a  scholarship  is  the  bias  given  to  the  mind 
by  the  assumption  that  in  some  important  fields  of  inquiry 
conclusions  are  not  to  be  drawn  from  the  facts,  but  facts 
are  to  be  interpreted  in  harmony  with  tradition ;  that  truth 
is  not  to  be  sought,  but  certain  statements  are  to  be  accepted 
as  truth  without  critical  examination  and  defended  as  such. 
In  order  not  to  lose  its  hold  upon  the  young  and  its  prestige 
in  the  world,  the  Roman  Catholic  Church  will  be  obliged  to 
grant,  in  ever  increasing  measure,  freedom  of  investigation 
and  of  academic  teaching,  and  to  tolerate  a  more  extensive 
divergence  of  opinion  among  its  scholars.  The  constant 
growth  of  popular  self-government  must  affect  the  Church 
in  two  ways,  by  gradually  depriving  it  of  all  financial  sup- 

340 


THE  PRESENT  PEOBLEM  341 

port  and  special  favors  by  the  state,  and  by  extending  the 
scope  of  local  and  individual  initiative  and  freedom  of 
action.  The  religious  mysticism  nurtured  by  the  beauty 
and  suggestiveness  of  an  elaborate  ritual  will  surely  lead 
contemplative  minds  again  and  again  into  new  paths,  as 
they  seek  in  the  depths  of  their  own  consciousness  for  more 
immediate  communion  with  the  divine.  The  growing  ac- 
quaintance among  the  Catholic  laity  with  translations  of  the 
Bible,  and  on  the  part  of  the  clergy1  with  Biblical  criticism 
must  also  be  assigned  great  importance.  It  is  to  be  ex- 
pected that  the  Catholic  Church,  living  in  the  midst  of  vast 
democracies  on  equal  terms  with  other  religious  bodies,  un- 
able and  unwilling  to  undertake  the  forcible  suppression  of 
what  it  still  deems  heresy,  will  show  its  marvelous  power  of 
adaptation  by  directing  its  forces  of  religious  sentiment  and 
energy  to  the  amelioration  of  human  conditions  and  the  ele- 
vation of  moral  standards,  thus  seeking  by  its  life  to  prove 
its  doctrine  all  divine.  In  so  far  it  will  reveal  the  influence 
for  good  of  that  son  of  man  whom  it  continues  to  worship 
as  a  god. 

In  respect  to  dogmatic  stability  the  condition  of  the 
Protestant  churches  is  more  precarious.  The  collective 
creed,  whether  expressed  in  officially  adopted  formulas,  or 
defined  by  virtual  agreement  without  written  statements,  is 
more  exposed  to  the  influence  of  private  opinion.  Symbols 
are  revised,  made  of  no  effect  by  a  liberal  construction,  or 
set  aside  completely.  The  Bible  is  put  into  the  hands  of 
everybody ;  the  right  of  private  interpretation  is  recognized 
at  least  in  principle ;  a  considerable  measure  of  freedom  is 
granted  to  theological  teachers  to  adopt  scientific  methods 
hi  their  work,  and  to  follow  the  dictates  of  their  conscience. 
Even  the  more  conservative  denominations  are  drifting 
away  from  the  old  doctrinal  landmarks.  A  secular  educa- 
tion, based  throughout  upon  a  conception  of  the  world  in 

1  The  case  of  Abbe"  Loisy  is  not  as  isolated  as  it  appears  to  many 
Protestants.  There  are  not  a  few  Catholic  scholars  who  have  adopted 
the  main  positions  of  modern  Biblical  criticism;  and  their  number 
will  increase. 


342  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZARETH 

general  and  of  human  history  in  particular,  totally  different 
from  that  of  Hebrew  and  Christian  antiquity,  affects  uncon- 
sciously the  mental  attitude  of  the  laity,  and  the  higher 
theological  education  of  the  clergy  inclines  to  liberalism  just 
in  proportion  as  it  is  thorough  and  efficient.  In  the  great 
universities  of  Europe  and  America  and  the  leading  theo- 
logical schools  there  is  not  a  single  teacher  of  commanding 
scholarship  who  still  adheres  to  the  traditional  view  of  the 
Old  Testament.  The  line  of  cleavage  between  those  inclined 
to  a  more  radical  criticism  and  those  satisfied  with  removing 
the  most  obvious  errors  of  tradition  runs  horizontally 
through  all  denominations.  In  the  field  of  New  Testament 
interpretation,  the  situation  is  indeed  somewhat  different. 
Canons  of  literary  and  historical  criticism  universally  recog- 
nized by  students  of  the  earlier  religious  life  of  Israel  are 
wholly  disregarded,  or  followed  hesitatingly,  partially  and 
inconsistently,  or  adopted  as  a  matter  of  course,  by  equally 
eminent  scholars.  This  difference  in  the  treatment  of  the 
two  parts  of  the  Bible  is  also  more  marked  in  England  and 
America  than  on  the  continent  of  Europe.  There  are  many 
indications,  however,  that  the  time  is  at  hand  when  the  same 
methods  shall  generally  be  applied  by  Protestant  scholars 
to  early  Christian  literature  and  the  Hebrew  Scriptures. 

Nevertheless,  too  much  significance  must  not  be  assigned 
to  this  trend  of  theological  teaching.  There  are  great  prac- 
tical activities  of  the  church  that  tend  to  preserve  the  types 
of  thought  vanishing  from  the  centers  of  learning.  The  re- 
ligious services,  with  their  recitation  of  creeds  and  unex- 
plained Scriptures,  their  doctrinal  hymns  and  didactic 
prayers,  their  sacraments  and  sermons,  as  a  rule  tend  to 
create  a  conservative  mood,  and  to  check  the  progress  of  re- 
ligious thought.  The  various  means  employed  to  bring 
about  a  religious  decision  early  in  life  are  of  great  im- 
portance. The  Sunday  School,  though  narrowing  its  field 
of  religious  instruction,  which  might  profitably  be  much 
wider,  to  Biblical  exegesis,  is  for  the  most  part  wholly  igno- 
rant of  modern  methods  of  interpretation.  By  confirmation 
in  churches  practising  infant  baptism,  by  the  corresponding 


THE  PEESENT  PROBLEM  343 

ceremony  of  baptizing  Sunday  School  children  practised  by 
the  Baptist  churches,  by  Young  People's  Unions,  Epworth 
Leagues  and  Christian  Endeavor  societies  with  their  curious 
pledges  exacted  of  everybody  to  talk  in  every  meeting,  the 
consent  of  the  young  to  certain  forms  of  belief  is  sought, 
and  the  adoption  of  certain  stereotyped  formulas  of  confes- 
sion is  encouraged,  while  the  minds  are  still  immature. 
Even  such  laudable  endeavors  to  unite  Christians  of  all  de- 
nominations for  common  work  as  the  Evangelical  Alliance, 
the  Federations  of  Churches  and  the  Young  Men's  Chris- 
tian Association  have  sought  a  doctrinal  basis  of  fellowship, 
and  in  emphasizing  what  seemed  essential  without  really 
being  so  have  excluded  Unitarian  Christians  on  the  one  hand 
and  Catholic  Christians  on  the  other.  The  foreign  missions 
undertaken  by  the  Protestant  churches  have  grown  out  of  a 
zeal  which  in  some  respects  has  not  been  according  to  wis- 
dom, in  so  far  as  it  has  aimed,  as  enlightened  missionaries 
do  not  now  aim,  to  save  the  souls  of  the  heathen  from  ever- 
lasting tortures  in  hell  by  an  acceptance  of  the  Christian 
faith,  has  attempted  to  rid  them  of  their  ancestral  religion, 
root  and  branch,  as  of  a  wholly  unclean  thing,  and  has 
sought  to  substitute  for  it  the  tenets  and  practices  of  some 
Christian  sect,  as  though  these  alone  had  a  right  to  a  place 
in  the  religious  life  of  man. 

Such  obvious  intellectual  limitations  will  lead  no  discrim- 
inating observer  to  underestimate  the  value  of  the  pulpit, 
the  Sunday  School,  the  unions  of  Christian  workers,  or 
foreign  missions.  The  world  owes  much  to  the  faithful  and 
unselfish  labors  of  a  long  succession  of  clergymen  whose 
names  have  gone  into  oblivion,  but  whose  ministry  has  been 
a  blessing  to  their  fellows.  Men  of  English  speech  will  al- 
ways recall  with  gratitude,  according  as  one  type  or  another 
more  strongly  appeals  to  them,  such  preachers  as  Knox  and 
Wesley,  Edwards  and  Finney,  Channing  and  Parker, 
Maurice  and  Robertson,  Moody  and  Spurgeon,  Beecher  and 
Brooks.  In  a  society  increasingly  jealous  of  all  undue  sec- 
tarian influences  on  the  common  schools,  it  has  been  the  duty 
of  the  church  to  provide  religious  instruction  for  the  young, 


344  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZAEETH 

and  the  work  of  Robert  Raikes,  carried  on  by  men  and 
women  sincerely  devoted  to  the  spiritual  welfare  of  the 
children,  has  been  a  means  of  saving  many  lives  from  moral 
ruin  and  of  developing  many  noble  characters.     Since  the 
days  when  the  first  Moravian  missions  were  established  one 
denomination  after  another  has  sent  out  some  of  its  noblest 
sons,  men  distinguished  for  piety,  learning  and  character,  to 
conquer  the  heathen  world  for  Christ;  and  if  they  have 
made  comparatively  few  converts  from  among  the  educated 
adherents  of  the  various  ethnic  faiths,  their  success  among 
the  outcasts  of  India,  the  hill-tribes  of  Burmah  and  Siam, 
the  cannibals  of  the  Pacific  islands  would  be  worth  every 
sacrifice,  even  if  it  were  less  apparent  than  it  is,  that  wher- 
ever Protestant  missions  have  gone  all  strata  of  society  have 
been  benefited  by  the  introduction  of  sanitary  reforms,  im- 
proved methods  of  work,  popular  education,  rational  medi- 
cine and  surgery,  a  higher  condition  for  woman,  and  a  bet- 
ter regulated  domestic  life.     The  names  of  William  Carey 
and  Adoniram  Judson,  of  Robert  Moffatt  and  David  Liv- 
ingstone will  live  as  long  as  mankind  shall  cherish  the  mem- 
ory of  its  great  heroes.     Nor  is  this  apostolic  succession  of 
great  missionaries  likely  to  end.     The  church  understands 
as  well  as  the  state  the  value  of  a  war  upon  a  common 
enemy  in  drawing  attention  from  internal  conditions;  and 
the  more  spiritual  the  weapons  become,  the  more  eagerly 
will  men  of  noble  parts  enlist  in  the  ranks.     Is  the  choice 
difficult  at  home  between  a  creed  hoary  with  age  and  a 
young  science  claiming  jurisdiction  in  the  name  of  reason, 
between  a  venerable  and  elaborate  cult  and  a  simple  and 
spontaneous  worship,  between  the  ease  of  an  establishment 
maintained  by  the  special  favors  of  the  state  and  the  pre- 
cariousness  of  an  independent  existence  demanded  by  jus- 
tice, between  building  up   an  organization  with  the  as- 
sistance and  in  the  interest  of  the  rich  or  preaching  the  good 
news  of  a  better  social  order  to  the  poor?    Let  the  moral 
and  material  condition  of  the  lower  races  be  made  the  basis 
of  appeal,  the  best  results  already  achieved  the  inspiration 
for  further  efforts,  the  proclamation  of  the  gospel  in  its 


THE  PRESENT  PROBLEM  345 

greatest  purity  to  all  the  nations  a  matter  of  honor,  an  intel- 
ligent cooperation  with  the  native  forms  of  religious  life 
instead  of  indiscriminate  condemnation  the  method  adopted, 
and  love  of  Jesus  and  his  cause  the  controlling  motive,  and 
there  can  be  no  doubt  that  vast  forces  of  spiritual  energy 
pent  up  in  the  Protestant  churches  may  yet  contribute  to 
the  uplifting  of  mankind  in  a  missionary  movement  of  un- 
paralleled proportions.  Thus  the  leadership  of  Jesus  has 
not  only  maintained  itself  in  various  ways  in  the  intel- 
lectually freest  part  of  the  Christian  church,  but  promises 
to  become  more  real  than  ever. 

The  most  important  question,  however,  confronting  the 
thoughtful  observer  is  not  whether  the  influence  of  Jesus 
will  continue  to  manifest  itself  more  or  less  in  the  accus- 
tomed fashion  within  churches  that,  even  if  they  were 
united,  would  include  only  a  fraction  of  the  whole  popula- 
tion, but  what  attitude  will  be  taken  to  him  and  his  teaching 
by  that  large  and  increasing  part  of  society  which  has 
drifted  away  from,  or  cannot  be  brought  under,  the  influ- 
ence of  the  church.  In  so  far  as  this  estrangement  may  be 
caused  by  moral  perversity,  a  frivolous  temper,  or  indiffer- 
ence to  all  higher  interests,  it  does  not  yet  present  a  real 
problem,  as  the  church  may  reasonably  hope  for  an  ally  in 
the  awakened  conscience  and  the  sobered  mind.  Far  more 
serious  is  the  aspect  of  the  case,  when  it  is  observed  what  the 
great  agencies  are  that  lead  minds  away  from  the  tutelage 
of  the  church,  or  prevent  them  from  accepting  it.  Chief 
of  these  are  science,  philosophy,  art,  and  social  idealism. 
The  modern  estimate  of  the  universe,  built  up  by  careful 
observation  of  innumerable  facts  by  a  host  of  especially 
trained  investigators,  is  fundamentally  different  from  that 
reflected  in  the  Hebrew  and  Christian  Scriptures.  It  will 
no  doubt  itself  be  greatly  modified  by  future  discoveries. 
But  the  change  can  by  no  possibility  be  in  the  direction  of 
the  views  once  left  behind,  because  palpably  based  on  crude 
impressions  and  unwarranted  generalizations.  There  is  not 
the  slightest  probability  that  the  scientific  world  will  ever 
return  to  the  belief  in  miracles.  The  geologic  ages  will  not 


346  THE  PROPHET  OF  NAZARETH 

be  wiped  out  of  existence.  The  devil  will  never  be  raised 
from  the  dead.  The  physician  of  the  future  is  not  likely  to 
revert  to  the  theory  of  demoniacal  possession  or  the  prac- 
tice of  exorcism.  Jurisprudence  will  continue  to  take 
cognizance  of  the  Jewish  legislation  only  as  an  important 
and  suggestive  chapter  in  the  history  of  law.  Theology 
itself  can  vindicate  its  position  as  the  science  of  the  relig- 
ious phenomena  of  man's  life  only  by  adopting  the  com- 
parative method,  and  by  critically  sifting  its  material.  The 
former  implies  that  the  religious  ideas  and  practices  of 
different  peoples  and  different  ages  be  placed  side  by  side, 
examined  without  prejudice,  and  judged  with  impartiality, 
while  the  latter  involves  a  thorough  textual,  literary,  and 
historical  criticism  of  whatever  sacred  book  may  be  studied. 
The  various  branches  of  science  are  to-day  becoming  known 
in  ever  widening  circles,  and  the  confidence  in  scientific 
methods  is  steadily  increasing.  Not  only  is  this  the  case  in 
Europe,  America  and  Australia,  but  also  in  India,  Japan 
and  China.  Thousands  of  scientific  text-books  are  accom- 
plishing a  missionary  work  in  the  midst  of  the  old  civiliza- 
tions of  Eastern  Asia  that  can  never  be  undone  by  any 
church. 

The  tendency  of  science  to  emphasize  the  universality  of 
law  and  the  unity  of  nature  has  furnished  a  fresh  impulse 
to  philosophic  speculation,  and  India  has  taken  her  place  by 
the  side  of  Greece  as  a  teacher  of  dialectics.  In  its  search 
for  ultimate  reality,  philosophy  is  almost  inevitably  led 
to  some  form  of  monism.  Materialism  is  apparently  the 
simplest  of  these  forms.  But  when  the  behavior  of  matter 
is  carefully  observed,  it  becomes  manifest  that  it  is  not  what 
it  seems.  The  qualities  that  are  perceived  by  the  senses  are 
recognized  as  not  belonging  to  the  essence.  Some  type  of 
idealism  is  therefore  most  prevalent  among  philosophers. 
If  matter  is  but  an  appearance,  the  substance  is  supposed  to 
be  mind,  either  as  thinking  subject,  or  as  pleroma  of  thought, 
or  as  both.  Thus  Berkeley,  Fichte,  and  Schelling  in  his 
earlier  period  conceived  of  essential  reality  as  a  thinking 
subject;  Hegel  regarded  it  as  the  unity  of  thinker  and 


THE  PRESENT  PROBLEM  347 

thought ;  and  Bostrom  considered  it  as  a  system  of  personal 
ideas.  Between  the  two  positions  that  matter  only  exists, 
while  thought  is  one  of  its  products,  and  that  mind  only 
exists,  while  matter  is  nothing  but  a  semblance,  there  seems 
to  be  room  for  other  views.  Kant  was  unwilling  to  admit 
that  ultimate  reality  is  dependent  upon  that  action  of  the 
conscious  subject  which  is  reflected  in  the  order  of  the 
phenomenal  world.  Schelling  in  his  later  years  emphasized 
will  as  the  realizing  factor  in  opposition  to  thought,  and 
suggested  an  obscure,  unconscious  ground  within  the  divine 
being.  From  this  position  it  is  not  as  far  as  has  been  sup- 
posed to  that  of  Schopenhauer,  who  conceived  of  the  world 
as  will  and  idea,  or  that  of  Hartmann,  who  looks  upon  the 
world-soul  as  unconscious  but  generating  consciousness  by 
the  emancipation  of  the  idea  from  the  will. 

The  original  cast  given  in  these  systems  of  thought  by 
fertile  and  vigorous  German  minds  to  the  age-long  en- 
deavors of  philosophy  to  solve  the  riddle  of  existence  should 
not  be  discounted.  But  the  influence  not  only  of  Greek  but 
also  of  Indian  speculation  is  unmistakable.  When  the 
great  Greek  thinkers  who  for  centuries  had  moulded  the  out- 
ward forms  of  men 's  reasoning  in  Christendom  were  at  last 
permitted  to  affect  the  substance  itself,  the  natural  result 
was  a  certain  similarity  of  the  new  structures  to  the  cre- 
ations of  those  ancient  master-builders.  A  fresh  and  unex- 
pected impetus  came  from  the  East  when  the  philosophical 
systems  of  India,  antedating  those  of  Greece,  became  known 
in  Europe.  First  came  Brahmanism,  then  Buddhism.  In 
the  former,  the  place  of  the  vanished  gods  is  taken  by  a  liv- 
ing universe,  whose  substance  is  spirit,  and  whose  form  is 
an  illusion.  In  Buddhism  the  gods  disappear  altogether, 
and  leave  a  world  that  is  realized  by  the  will  to  be,  and  from 
whose  evil  escape  can  come  only  by  cessation  of  desire. 
The  subtle  philosophy  of  Bhagavadgita  and  the  Upanishads 
found  a  response  not  only  in  Germany  but  also  in  America, 
where  Emerson  became  the  exponent  of  a  transcendental 
idealism  profoundly  influenced  by  these  works.  In 
Schopenhauer  and  Hartmann  the  keener  criticism  of  reality 


348  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZARETH 

characteristic  of  Buddhism  seems  to  find  its  counterpart, 
familiarity  with  this  type  of  Oriental  thought  is  unquestion- 
able, and  Hartmann's  hope  for  "the  final  redemption  from 
the  misery  of  volition  and  existence  into  the  painlessness 
of  non- volition  and  non-existence"  exactly  expresses  Gau- 
tama's. This  earnest  search  for  the  truth  is  no  mere  idle 
speculation.  An  ever  increasing  number  of  men  and 
women  are  convinced  that  no  advance  in  our  knowledge  of 
ultimate  reality  can  be  made  except  by  comprehensive  and 
accurate  observation  of  nature,  and  a  careful  study  of  its 
reflection  in  the  consciousness  of  man.  To  them  the  deistic 
idea  of  an  extra-cosmic  divine  personality,  existing  before 
the  universe,  creating  it  out  of  nothing,  ruling  it  from  with- 
out, and  destroying  it  at  will,  is  quite  inconceivable.  The 
serious  question  with  them  concerns  the  essential  character 
of  nature,  whether  its  substance  is  wholly  conscious  or  only 
partially  so,  whether  its  infinite,  eternal  and  exhaustless 
energy,  in  every  moment  and  at  every  point,  waits  on  an  in- 
telligent design,  or  consciousness  and  self-determination  are 
only  its  incidental  fruitage,  and  whether  some  of  the  indi- 
vidual manifestations  of  this  energy  may  or  may  not  pre- 
serve the  continuity  of  consciousness  in  spite  of  apparent 
disintegration.  And  upon  their  ontology  they  build  more 
or  less  consciously  and  consistently  their  theory  of  ethics 
and  their  principles  of  conduct. 

In  modern  life,  art  commands  an  absorbing  interest. 
With  the  increase  and  wider  distribution  of  wealth  archi- 
tecture has  become  the  concern  of  every  citizen.  Emanci- 
pated from  conventional  designs,  it  has  developed  novel 
combinations  and  pleasing  varieties.  Man  is  influenced  un- 
consciously, but  therefore  none  the  less  really,  by  the  char- 
acter of  the  home  in  which  he  resides.  He  thinks  and  feels 
differently  in  a  Gothic  cathedral  from  what  he  does  in  the 
auditorium  of  a  modern  church.  Painting  and  cognate 
forms  of  artistic  representation  have  become  potent  and 
significant  factors.  When  the  predominance  of  ecclesiasti- 
cal subjects  ceased,  painters  began  to  draw  their  motives 
from  a  wider  range.  Landscapes,  animal  life,  portraits,  do- 


THE  PEESENT  PROBLEM  349 

mestic  scenes,  historic  events  attracted  their  attention. 
Through  the  engraver,  the  photographer  and  the  printing- 
press,  artistic  productions  have  found  their  way  into  the 
humblest  homes.  Interest  thus  centers  everywhere  upon 
works  not  immediately  suggestive  of  religion.  Music  finds 
a  growing  number  of  passionate  lovers.  To  those  whose 
ears  are  attuned  to  harmonies  of  sound  earth  holds  few  de- 
lights equal  to  those  that  a  Bach,  a  Beethoven,  or  a  Wagner 
gives.  Of  the  different  forms  of  poetry  it  is  especially  the 
drama  that  exercises  a  vital  influence  upon  men  to-day.  On 
the  stage  an  interpretation  of  life  in  terms  of  beauty  is  at- 
tempted. The  grandeur  of  human  nature  is  portrayed,  and 
its  foibles  are  mirrored  forth.  The  great  passions  that 
make  or  mar  humanity,  that  elevate  and  refine,  or  ruin  and 
degrade,  are  presented  with  the  aim  of  likeness  to  life.  Vast 
moral  problems  are  set  forth  with  unequaled  vividness  and 
power.  The  significance  of  character  is  brought  out,  and 
the  worth  of  gentle  manners.  Trifling  incidents  of  man's 
existence  are  pictured  with  a  touch  of  humor  that  corrects 
the  perspective,  relieves  the  strain,  and  mellows  the  temper. 
Scarcely  less  important  a  place  is  held  by  the  novel,  which 
clothes  with  flesh  and  blood  the  skeleton  of  history,  delin- 
eates character,  depicts  social  conditions,  sketches  the  pos- 
sible interplay  of  circumstance  and  human  action.  These 
modern  creations  of  the  imagination  are  nearer  to  reality 
than  the  mythical  lore  of  antiquity ;  the  actors  are  men  and 
not  gods;  the  interest  is  fixed  upon  things  regarded  as 
secular  from  the  ecclesiastical  point  of  view. 

But  profound  as  is  the  influence  of  science  and  philos- 
ophy, art  and  literature,  on  that  part  of  the  population  in 
Protestant  lands  which  is  not  attracted  by  the  church,  the 
power  of  social  idealism  in  some  form  is  even  more  marked. 
However  imperfect  the  realization  of  democracy  may  have 
been,  the  principle  of  popular  self-government  has  gained 
general  recognition  in  most  European  countries  as  well  as 
in  America  and  Australia.  The  theory  of  the  divine  right 
of  kings  no  longer  commands  serious  attention.  Whether 
the  chief  executive  is  called  president  or  king  or  emperor, 


350  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZAEETH 

he  is  understood  to  be  a  servant  of  the  state,  such  power  as 
he  has  being  delegated  to  him  by  the  people.  There  still 
are  many  artificial  limitations  of  the  franchise,  and  the 
methods  of  expressing  the  people's  will  are  everywhere  im- 
perfect, but  the  whole  trend  of  political  development  is  in 
the  direction  of  universal  suffrage  and  a  more  direct  influ- 
ence of  every  man  and  woman  upon  the  management  of 
common  concerns.  If  at  first  the  extension  of  rights  of  citi- 
zenship to  the  disfranchised  seemed  an  end  in  itself,  since  it 
implied  the  enthronement  of  a  new  principle  of  political 
life,  it  gradually  became  apparent  that  its  real  significance 
consisted  in  being  a  means  for  effecting  far  reaching  changes 
in  social  conditions.  Many  conditions  once  regarded  as  un- 
alterable, imposed  by  Providence,  or  necessarily  incident  to 
all  social  life,  are  now  looked  upon  as  wholly  dependent 
upon  the  will  of  the  people  and  subject  to  any  change  it 
deems  wise  to  institute.  Whether  a  nation  shall  be  plunged 
into  war  is  for  the  most  part  no  longer  left  in  the  discretion 
of  a  sovereign  ruler,  and  the  time  cannot  be  far  off  when 
no  enlightened  nation  will  undertake  a  war  without  an  op- 
portunity being  given  to  every  man  and  woman  vitally  con- 
cerned to  register  a  vote  for  or  against  it.  If  in  a  democ- 
racy sanitary  and  hygienic  conditions  are  neglected,  slums 
are  maintained,  excessive  hours  of  labor  and  inadequate 
compensation  for  work  are  allowed,  children  are  permitted 
to  grow  up  without  sufficient  education  to  develop  native 
capacities,  a  few  are  granted  special  privileges  by  which  it 
is  possible  for  them  to  amass  enormous  fortunes  and  thereby 
gain  for  themselves  an  illegitimate  power  over  their  fellow- 
men,  while  the  many  are  handicapped  and  deprived  of  the 
full  enjoyment  of  life,  this  is  not  because  it  must  be,  but 
because  the  many  who  have  the  power  to  effect  the  desirable 
changes  do  not  yet  perceive  what  ought  to  be,  or  realize 
what  might  be. 

But  the  perception  of  higher  ideals  has  grown  with  mar- 
velous rapidity  during  the  last  century.  Each  school  of 
earnest  thinkers  upon  social  subjects  has  contributed  some- 
thing of  value  to  the  forming  ideal  of  society.  If  one  group 


THE  PRESENT  PROBLEM  351 

has  brought  out  more  clearly  the  advantages  of  partnership 
and  cooperation,  another  has  rightly  emphasized  the  value 
of  stewardship  and  individual  initiative.  Some  have  ren- 
dered a  real  service  by  showing  the  inexpediency  of  leaving 
in  irresponsible  private  hands  public  utilities  that  society 
would  more  profitably  control,  or  own  and  manage  through 
responsible  servants,  while  others  have  with  equal  wisdom 
indicated  a  sphere  of  private  activities  still  jealously 
watched  and  subject  to  public  interference,  which  would 
more  wisely  be  left  to  private  discretion.  As  the  pendulum 
swings  between  socialism  and  individualism,  the  errors  of 
one-sided  and  exaggerated  views  become  apparent.  The 
demand  that  every  member  of  society  shall  be  obliged  to 
render  some  form  of  useful  service,  and  in  return  shall  re- 
ceive an  equitable  share  in  the  common  wealth,  is  not  a  whit 
less  valid  or  important  because  of  any  incidental  error  in  the 
theory  of  those  who  make  it  as  to  what  constitutes  legitimate 
labor  or  economic  value,  or  an  equitable  share,  or  the  most 
expedient  method  of  securing  a  fair  distribution.  The  views 
one  day  derided  as  empty  dreams  the  next  day  are  proved 
by  sober  tests  to  be  based  on  good  foundations.  Economic 
methods  regarded  in  one  place  as  full  of  danger  or  impos- 
sible of  application,  in  another  place  reveal  their  excellence 
and  practicability. 

The  attitude  toward  recognized  social  evils  has  undergone 
a  significant  change.  Antiquity  said :  Slavery  is  a  neces- 
sity; but  masters  should  treat  their  slaves  in  a  humane 
manner ;  slaves  should  obey  their  masters,  and  make  them- 
selves inwardly  free  by  a  virtuous  life.  With  us  this  an- 
tiquity reaches  down  to  the  last  generation.  The  modern 
conscience  says:  it  is  wrong  for  a  man  to  own  his  fellow- 
man;  and  slavery  should  therefore  be  abolished.  And 
slavery  has  been  abolished.  In  the  past,  war  has  been 
looked  upon  as  an  honorable  pursuit  or  an  unavoidable 
evil,  and  civilized  nations  have  been  content  with  demand- 
ing more  humane  methods,  kindlier  treatment  of  prisoners, 
and  better  care  for  the  wounded.  To-day  the  conviction 
is  growing  that  it  is  a  crime  for  one  nation  to  wage  war 


352  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZARETH 

upon  another  nation,  that  such  indiscriminate  mass  murder 
should  be  abolished,  and  that  differences  between  states 
should  be  settled,  as  differences  between  individuals  are,  by 
the  decisions  of  duly  recognized  courts.  Disease,  physical, 
mental  or  moral,  once  considered  as  the  work  of  gods  or 
demons,  or  deemed  inevitable,  is  now  seen  to  be  preventable 
and  curable.  The  idea  that  the  mass  of  men  must  of  neces- 
sity be  ignorant,  and  fit  only  for  work  demanding  little  skill 
or  intelligence,  while  education  and  extensive  training  can 
only  be  the  special  privilege  of  the  few,  is  giving  place  to 
the  view  that  every  child  should  receive  all  the  education 
necessary  to  develop  a  good  and  intelligent  citizen,  and  to 
unfold  the  special  aptitudes  by  which  the  greatest  service 
can  be  rendered  to  society.  Until  recent  times  it  has  been 
generally  supposed  either  that  wealth  is  a  sign  of  the  favor 
of  some  god  thus  rewarding  piety  and  virtue,  while  poverty 
is  a  curse  inflicted  by  a  deity,  as  a  punishment  for  sin,  or  that 
the  accumulation  of  vast  fortunes  in  the  hands  of  a  small 
number  of  men  and  the  economic  dependence  or  actual 
penury  of  the  masses  are  the  necessary  results  of  some  mys- 
terious law  with  whose  operation  it  is  dangerous  or  wicked 
to  interfere.  There  have  indeed  been  significant  protests 
against  one  as  well  as  the  other  of  these  superstitions,  but 
they  have  too  often  been  vitiated  by  a  morbid  preference  for 
poverty,  a  narrow  conception  of  human  life,  or  an  artificial 
scheme  of  equalization.  At  present  the  degrading  influence 
of  great  wealth  and  of  great  poverty  alike  is  seen  by 
thoughtful  men;  and  the  conviction  is  growing  that  the 
grade  of  intelligence,  freedom,  virtue  and  happiness  would 
be  higher  in  a  society  where  there  were  neither  rich  nor 
poor.  It  is  widely  recognized  that  the  great  fortunes  are 
not  due  to  marked  obedience  to  any  laws,  human  or  divine, 
but  in  a  considerable  measure  to  clever  circumvention  of 
equitable  laws,  corruption  of  legislative  bodies,  govern- 
mental favoritism,  and  flagrant  disregard  of  the  most  ele- 
mental principles  of  justice.  That  the  organization  of  in- 
dustry and  commerce  has  been  of  considerable  value  in 
lowering  the  cost  of  production,  improving  the  conditions 


THE  PEESENT  PROBLEM  353 

of  labor,  and  obviating  waste,  is  not  overlooked  by  those  who 
demand  that  the  capital  shall  be  more  directly  controlled  by 
the  people.  Nor  is  the  principle  of  private  property,  which 
renders  possible  the  gratification  of  varied  tastes  and  safe- 
guards individual  liberty,  in  any  essential  respect  sacrificed 
when  communities  provide  themselves,  at  the  actual  cost  of 
obtaining  them,  with  such  necessities  as  water,  gas,  elec- 
tricity, sewers,  tramways,  garbage  incinerators,  paved 
streets,  parks,  docks,  wharfs,  bridges,  baths,  schools, 
museums,  galleries,  theaters,  administrative  buildings,  resi- 
dences, stores,  workshops,  gardens,  playgrounds  and  the 
like;  or  when  nations  take  charge  themselves  of  mails, 
expressage,  railroads,  telegraphs,  telephones,  steamships, 
canals,  forests,  mines,  universities,  academies  of  art,  scien- 
tific expeditions,  and  a  multitude  of  other  legitimate  com- 
mon concerns.  Conditions  of  life  guaranteeing  to  each 
member  of  society  an  adequate  education,  opportunity  of 
suitable  work,  stability  of  position,  an  equitable  share  in 
the  produce  of  common  toil,  a  high  degree  of  individual  lib- 
erty, a  voice  in  the  management  of  public  affairs,  and  se- 
curity against  want  in  old  age,  are  no  longer  regarded  by 
competent  investigators  of  social  phenomena  as  unapproach- 
able ideals  but  as  ends  to  whose  realization  the  political 
action  of  self-governing  peoples  should  consciously  and  de- 
terminedly move. 

The  attitude  of  the  church  to  this  mighty  movement  of 
thought,  endeavor  and  aspiration,  involving  the  greatest 
moral  questions  confronting  the  modern  world,  has  too  often 
been  one  of  indifference  or  positive  hostility.  During  the 
long  years  when  the  abolition  of  slavery  was  agitated  in  the 
United  States  the  pulpit  in  general  aided  and  abetted  the 
trafficker  in  human  flesh,  while  the  champions  of  liberty 
whose  names  the  nation  honors  to-day  were  for  the  most 
part  outside  the  pale  of  the  church.  If  a  minister  espoused 
the  unpopular  cause,  he  frequently  lost  caste  among  his  col- 
leagues or  jeopardized  his  position.  The  leading  champions 
of  woman's  cause,  her  economic  independence  and  political 
enfranchisement,  have  been  without,  the  strongest  defenders 


354  THE  PROPHET  OF  NAZAEETH 

of  present  inequalities  within  the  church.  Not  without  a 
certain  degree  of  justice  has  the  church,  especially  as  it 
exists  in  the  larger  centers  of  population,  been  called  "a 
capitalistic  institution."  Though  there  are  many  honor- 
able exceptions,  the  leaders  of  the  church  as  a  rule  have 
shown  little  sympathy  with  the  aspirations  of  organized 
labor,  little  understanding  of  the  aims  of  social  reform,  lit- 
tle courage  to  rebuke  iniquity  in  high  places,  little  capacity 
for  grappling  with  large  moral  problems,  little  disposition 
to  plead  the  cause  of  the  weak.  This  applies  to  the  Euro- 
pean churches  as  well  as  to  the  American.  No  protest 
against  the  martial  spirit  and  the  constant  increase  of  arma- 
ments has  come  from  the  Evangelical  Church  of  Germany. 
The  greatest  peace-organization  in  the  world  is  the  Social 
Democracy,  which  recognizes  no  religion. 

What  can  Jesus  do  for  these  millions  for  whom  the  church 
as  it  is  seems  to  be  able  to  do  so  little  ?  What  bread  of  life 
has  he  to  give  ?  What  real  needs  of  theirs  can  he  meet  ?  It 
is  evident  that  if  he  is  to  give  them  anything,  it  must  be 
truth  and  example,  spirit  and  life.  It  is  also  clear  that  he 
cannot  be  their  only  teacher.  In  matters  that  must  always 
seem  to  them  of  vital  importance  they  will  seek  other  guides. 
If  a  man  would  know  the  methods  and  results  of  investiga- 
tion in  any  field  of  research,  he  must  learn  of  those  whose 
special  gifts  and  characteristics,  opportunities  and  equip- 
ment, have  made  them  the  best  representatives  of  that  par- 
ticular branch  of  science.  As  a  student  of  physical  science, 
he  will  sit  at  the  feet  of  men  like  Copernicus  and  Galileo, 
Newton  and  Laplace,  Lyell  and  Agassiz,  Faraday  and  Helm- 
holtz,  Linnaeus  and  de  Candolle,  Schleiden  and  Bichat, 
Lamarck  and  Darwin.  At  the  hand  of  accomplished  phi- 
lologists, historians,  archaeologists  and  literary  critics  the 
proper  methods  must  be  acquired  by  which  it  is  possible  to 
gain  a  knowledge  of  ancient  civilizations,  their  languages 
and  literatures,  their  social  customs  and  forms  of  religious 
life.  To  determine  the  authorship  and  date  of  the  Hebrew 
Scriptures  and  their  true  character,  a  thorough  knowledge 
of  philology,  literature,  history,  mythology  and  natural 


THE  PKESENT  PEOBLEM  355 

science  is  required.  In  so  far  as  theology  is  a  science  deal- 
ing with  the  religious  phenomena  of  man's  life,  it  must  base 
its  conclusions  upon  a  comprehensive  survey  of  the  facts 
as  they  are  exhibited  in  the  various  religions,  and  present  a 
critical  interpretation  of  the  different  religious  beliefs  and 
practices.  No  philosopher  could  without  serious  loss  pass 
by  the  great  thinkers  of  India,  Greece  and  Germany,  or  be 
justified  in  the  attempt  to  construct  upon  the  reported  say- 
ings of  Jesus  a  complete  theory  of  the  universe,  ignoring  the 
subtlest  and  most  penetrating  thought  upon  the  subject. 
The  artist  would  miserably  fail,  were  he  to  seek  for  his  mas- 
ters in  Palestine.  Even  the  social  reformer  can  ill  afford  to 
neglect  the  patient  and  keen-sighted  investigators  of  eco- 
nomic conditions  and  political  relations,  while  endeavoring 
to  derive  from  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount  a  complete  descrip- 
tion of  what  society  should  be.  There  are  important 
features  of  the  modern  ideal  not  touched  upon  in  the  extant 
utterances  of  Jesus.  He  does  not  seem  to  have  said  any- 
thing concerning  the  necessity  of  education,  the  duty  of 
work,  the  principles  of  distribution,  the  rights  of  woman, 
the  use  of  the  franchise,  the  ministry  of  art.  It  is  not  pos- 
sible to  infer  from  the  Golden  Kule  how  he  conceived  of 
its  application  to  the  complex  relations  of  modern  society, 
any  more  than  this  can  be  done  in  the  case  of  the  similar 
rule  of  Hillel. 

Yet  there  are  real  and  urgent  needs  of  this  intellectually 
maturer  section  of  society  that  are  of  such  a  character  that 
men  may  well  inquire  whether  Jesus  is  not  better  qualified 
than  any  other  leader  of  mankind  to  meet  them.  Science 
and  philosophy,  art  and  politics  are  far  from  being  what 
they  should  be,  and  those  who  seek  to  give  to  life  through 
them  a  greater  worth  and  satisfaction  often  fail.  While 
science  has  many  devotees  consumed  with  a  passion  for  the 
truth  and  finding  in  this  love  an  ample  reward,  there  are 
also  many  to  whom  it  is  only  a  means  of  securing  a  liveli- 
hood, gratifying  social  ambition,  or  gaining  notoriety,  many 
coarse  natures  filling  the  circumambient  air  with  their  dis- 
cordant cries,  their  arrogant  assertions,  their  ill-bred  clamor 


356  THE  PROPHET  OF  NAZARETH 

for  recognition,  their  wearisome  priority  claims,  their  angry 
denunciation  of  opponents,  many  unclean  spirits  slovenly 
in  all  their  methods,  dishonest  in  the  use  of  other  men's  work, 
ignorant  of  the  simplest  commandments  in  the  scholar's 
decalogue,  and  a  host  of  parasites  swearing  in  verba  magis- 
tri,  repeating  the  slogans  of  their  clan,  puffed  up  with 
knowledge  not  their  own  and  incapable  of  an  independent 
judgment  or  a  fair  and  generous  appreciation.  If  the  great 
problems  of  philosophy  are  examined  by  master-minds  bas- 
ing their  conclusions  on  wide  and  accurate  knowledge,  and 
preserving  before  the  mysteries  of  existence  a  humble, 
docile  and  reverent  attitude,  they  also  attract  multitudes 
who  are  ready  to  gloat  over  the  downfall  of  ancient  systems 
without  any  perception  of  the  elements  of  truth  contained 
in  them,  to  accept  the  articles  of  some  new  creed  without  a 
personal  investigation  of  their  validity,  to  strip  the  world 
of  its  mythical  veil  without  ability  to  look  with  chaste  eyes 
upon  its  undraped  beauty,  to  discard  old  rules  and  sanctions 
of  morality  without  testing  the  foundations  of  a  new 
ethics,  or  guarding  sufficiently  the  sense  of  obligation. 
Much  that  goes  under  the  name  of  art  is  a  wretched  counter- 
feit injurious  alike  to  taste,  good  manners  and  morality.  A 
mass  of  pictorial  representations  of  woman's  body,  serving 
no  legitimate  interest  of  art,  and  not  satisfying  the  healthy 
desire  for  beauty,  but  designed  solely  to  excite  sexual 
passions,  is  spread  broadcast  over  our  Western  lands.  The 
theater  is  too  often  false  to  its  mission  as  an  institution  of 
high  art.  Neglecting  the  immortal  works  of  genius  and 
the  better  class  of  contemporaneous  dramas,  it  frequently 
stoops  to  the  presentation  of  works  marked  only  by  their 
inanity,  coarse  sensuousness  and  vulgarity.  This  evil 
would  be  more  easily  cured  if  the  responsibility  lay  only 
with  the  managers  whose  financial  interests  lead  them  to 
cater  to  depraved  tastes ;  but  the  public  is  equally  at  fault. 
The  influence  is  mutual.  Without  popular  support  there 
would  be  no  inducement  to  present  anything  but  the  best ; 
without  ingenious  devices  for  whetting  the  appetite  such 
abnormal  tastes  would  not  develop.  Novel-reading  has  as- 


THE  PEESENT  PEOBLEM  357 

sumed  such  proportions  as  to  constitute  a  danger.  A  mor- 
bid craving  for  fiction  may  be  developed  even  by  the  reading 
of  good  novels,  and  create  a  dislike  for  more  substantial 
branches  of  literature,  for  scientific  investigations,  or  for 
the  ordinary  work  and  experiences  of  life.  But  there  is  an 
abundance  of  bad  novels,  written  in  a  wretched  style,  de- 
picting crime  in  a  fascinating  manner,  giving  an  exagger- 
ated importance  to  the  erotic  element,  tending  to  obliterate 
all  moral  distinctions. 

In  the  struggle  between  antiquated  institutions  and  a 
better  social  order  the  defenders  are  not  always  in  the 
wrong,  and  the  assailants  are  seldom  wholly  right.  Even 
the  best  cause  does  not  make  so  perfect  a  cleavage  that  all 
the  sheep  are  upon  one  side  and  all  the  goats  upon  the 
other.  The  friends  of  reform  have  to  reckon  not  only  with 
the  force  of  habit,  the  power  of  prejudice,  and  the  vested 
interests  arrayed  against  them,  but  also  with  their  own 
errors  of  judgment,  lack  of  experience  and  moral  failings. 
How  formidable  are  the  obstacles  that  must  be  overcome,  if 
war  is  to  be  abolished!  Millions  of  men  gain  their  liveli- 
hood by  war.  Millions  of  money  are  invested  in  machines 
designed  for  the  destruction  of  life  and  property.  Millions 
of  children  are  brought  up  to  look  upon  war  as  the  highest 
expression  of  patriotism.  National  vanity,  national  greed 
and  national  prejudice  urge  the  increase  of  armies  and 
navies.  Kulers  and  ruling  classes  rely  for  their  power  upon 
a  soldiery  sworn  to  blind  and  unquestioning  obedience.  On 
the  other  hand,  the  opponents  of  war  often  fail  to  appreciate 
the  relative  value  of  even  an  indignant  and  forcible  pro- 
test against  wrong,  or  to  recognize  the  inadequacy  of  extant 
provisions  for  settling  disputes  between  nations  by  civilized 
methods,  or  to  estimate  fairly  the  moral  significance  of  any 
enthusiasm  for  the  welfare  of  a  people,  any  unselfish  devo- 
tion  to  larger  interests,  however  mistaken  the  expression 
may  be.  Still  more  deplorable  is  the  fact  that  at  critical 
times  friends  of  peace  so  frequently  are  disorganized  and 
inactive,  allow  themselves  to  be  influenced  to  some  extent 
by  the  passions  that  rage  about  them,  lose  confidence  in  the 


358  THE  PROPHET  OF  NAZARETH 

more  excellent  way,  and  fearing  the  stigma  of  cowardice 
or  treason  become  by  guilty  silence  traitors  to  their  deepest 
convictions  and  to  their  country's  highest  interests.  The 
attempts  to  extend  the  suffrage  to  men  of  small  means,  men 
of  different  color,  or  women,  run  counter  to  the  powerful 
instincts,  strengthened  by  social  conventions  and  religion, 
that  lead  the  rich  to  lord  it  over  the  poor,  the  white  race 
over  the  dark  ones,  the  men  over  the  women.  But  the  way 
of  reform  is  also  blocked  by  the  ignorance,  incompetence, 
indifference  to  higher  interests,  ill-balanced  judgment  and 
ill-governed  temper  of  the  disfranchised.  In  union  there 
is  strength.  Through  organized  efforts  it  has  been  possible 
to  raise  the  standard  of  living  for  millions  of  workers,  fix  a 
maximum  day  and  a  minimum  wage,  make  the  employment 
of  little  children  in  factories  illegal,  improve  the  sanitary 
conditions  of  labor,  and  render  the  position  of  the  indi- 
vidual less  insecure.  If,  forgetful  of  these  advantages 
gained  for  him  by  organized  labor,  a  man  thinks  that  he 
can  single-handed  deal  with  a  powerful  syndicate,  and 
secure  from  it  concessions  that  it  is  not  in  its  interest  to 
grant,  he  is  grievously  mistaken.  But  not  less  wrong  is 
clearly  the  organization  which  resorts  to  violence  to  force 
such  a  man  to  unite  with  his  fellows.  Reproach  is  cast 
upon  a  worthy  cause  and  irreparable  injury  done,  whenever 
the  passions  are  not  restrained,  and  kept  under  the  control 
of  reason  and  a  due  regard  for  the  rights  of  others.  It  is 
not  sufficient  in  a  democracy  that  there  shall  be  a  readiness 
on  the  part  of  the  minority  to  respect  the  decisions  of  the 
majority ;  there  must  also  be  a  willingness  on  the  part  of  the 
majority  to  consider  the  rights  and  reasonable  desires  of 
the  minority.  As  long  as  the  interests  of  one  class  seem 
antagonistic  to,  or  in  reality  conflict  with,  the  interests  of 
another  class,  social  strife  is  easily  kindled  and  intensified 
by  success  as  much  as  by  defeat.  When  the  dumb  and  sul- 
len resignation  of  a  man  to  his  lot,  whatever  it  may  be,  gives 
place  to  hope  and  active  effort  for  the  improvement  of  his 
condition,  a  centering  of  all  interest  on  material  things  is 
apt  to  ensue  which  often  does  serious  harm  to  the  finer  in- 


THE  PEESENT  PROBLEM  359 

stincts  of  manhood.  It  is  not  to  be  denied  that  the  social 
atmosphere  at  times  seems  saturated  with  avarice  and  lust 
and  spite,  and  that  the  moral  progress  of  the  race  is  re- 
tarded by  the  lack  of  sterling  honesty,  unselfish  devotion 
and  considerate  judgment  noticeable  in  all  social  relations. 
Masses  of  men  seem  to  be  absorbed  in  the  pursuit  of  things 
which  perish  with  the  using.  The  higher  interests  of 
human  life  seem  to  have  no  attraction  for  them.  The  igno- 
rance and  suffering  and  sin  of  their  fellow-men  do  not  fill 
their  hearts  with  compassion  and  a  desire  to  help.  They  ap- 
parently never  ask  themselves  to  what  nobler  use  they  might 
put  the  intelligence  and  power  they  possess  as  men.  They 
appear  to  drift  aimlessly  toward  ignoble  destinies  rather 
than  resolutely  shaping  their  lives  into  harmony  with  some 
exalted  pattern.  In  their  eagerness  to  satisfy  every  appe- 
tite and  every  passing  whim,  they  lose  their  lives  and  fail 
of  true  self-realization.  With  mockery  they  treat  every 
dream  of  social  justice.  No  vision  of  a  better  order  of 
society  finds  a  hospitable  reception  in  their  minds.  They 
seek  not  first  the  kingdom  of  heaven  and  its  righteous- 
ness, and  therefore  know  not  how  to  use  well  any  other 
thing.  They  seem  to  have  no  sense  of  the  deep  and  sacred 
meaning  of  life.  Neither  the  nature  by  which  man  is  sur- 
rounded, with  its  intimations  of  a  rational  order  and  in- 
flexible laws,  nor  human  history,  with  its  suggestions  of  an 
upward  trend  and  of  powers  that  work  for  righteousness, 
is  permitted  to  lead  them  to  a  reverent  contemplation  of  the 
infinite  source  of  their  existence  and  a  willing  submission 
to  cosmic  moral  laws,  that  they  might  have  life,  and  have  it 
more  abundantly.  It  is  this  need  of  moral  strength  to  realize 
a  high  ideal  that  constitutes  the  deepest  problem  of  the  age. 


CHAPTER  XIV 

THE  LEADEESHIP  OF  JESUS 

Spiritual  needs  can  only  be  met  by  spiritual  means.  If 
men  and  women  are  to  be  filled  with  such  a  passion  for 
truth,  such  a  hunger  after  righteousness,  such  a  love  of 
beauty,  as  shall  lift  and  purify  their  souls,  make  their 
experiences  deep  and  rich,  render  their  characters  strong 
and  resplendent,  and  flood  them  with  joy  unspeakable 
and  full  of  glory,  flame  must  be  kindled  by  flame,  spirit 
breathe  upon  spirit,  life  touch  life.  There  is  no  force  in 
things  to  raise  the  sunken  spirit.  The  power  of  gravita- 
tion cannot  straighten  out  a  crooked  disposition.  The 
treasures  of  a  Croesus  cannot  fill  the  inner  void.  Cleans- 
ing the  outside  of  the  cup  does  not  make  that  which  is 
within  pure.  There  is  no  balm  in  Gilead  that  will  cure 
the  wounded  heart.  It  is  the  touch  of  man  that  heals. 
It  is  in  human  minds  that  those  ideals  are  born  which 
blaze  like  beacon  lights  and  guide  the  erring.  In  human 
hearts  spring  up  those  mighty  impulses,  those  powerful 
emotions,  that  quicken  zeal  and  strengthen  moral  purpose. 
In  the  depths  of  great  souls  broods  the  destiny  of  the  race. 
In  them  are  fountains  of  eternal  life.  Out  of  the  bosom 
of  humanity  deliverers  come  forth,  each  giving  what  he 
has  to  give.  While  other  teachers  may  and  will  do  much 
for  our  modern  world,  the  healing,  purging,  elevating  in- 
fluence of  Jesus  is  of  priceless  value.  When  his  teach- 
ing, conduct,  spiritual  attitude  and  character  are  rightly 
understood,  they  become  a  source  of  strength  and  inspira- 
tion. No  man  can  come  in  contact  with  him  without  feel- 
ing that  life  goes  out  from  him.  His  touch  is  quickening. 
He  is  able  to  help  the  scientist  in  his  investigation,  the 
philosopher  in  his  search  for  ultimate  reality,  the  artist 

860 


THE  LEADEKSHIP  OF  JESUS  361 

in  his  creative  work,  the  social  reformer  in  his  endeavor 
to  cast  in  nobler  moulds  the  common  life.  He  may  have 
known  very  little  of  astronomy  or  geology,  history  or  lit- 
erature, scientific  methods  or  scientific  results,  but  he  pos- 
sessed in  a  very  marked  degree  such  essential  qualifica- 
tions for  success  in  any  scientific  work  as  a  disposition  to 
examine  the  facts  for  himself,  independence  of  authority, 
confidence  in  his  own  judgment,  capacity  for  inductive 
reasoning,  love  of  truth,  gentleness  and  firmness  in  pre- 
senting it,  and  willingness  to  make  sacrifices  for  its  sake. 
No  student  can  listen  closely  to  his  words  without  being 
impressed  with  their  ring  of  sincerity,  their  mission  to 
make  known  what  he  actually  thought,  their  testimony 
to  careful  observation  and  protracted  reflection.  His 
mental  freedom,  his  loyalty  to  conviction,  his  kindliness  of 
judgment  are  contagious.  In  his  presence  the  scholar  is 
ashamed  of  petty  squabbles  and  pedantic  ways,  pride  of 
knowledge  and  thirst  for  fame,  denial  of  merit  and  nar- 
rowness of  sympathy,  swallowing  camels  and  straining 
out  gnats,  and  becomes  reverent,  truthful  and  considerate. 
Jesus  was  a  thinker,  and  can  therefore  help  those  who 
think  deeply  and  earnestly  upon  the  great  problems  of 
existence.  He  may  never  have  dreamed  of  the  numer- 
ous problems  concerning  the  constitution  of  the  universe 
and  the  faculties  of  the  human  mind  that  had  for  centuries 
occupied  the  philosophers  of  India  and  Greece,  and  he 
may  have  shared  the  current  beliefs  of  his  time  in  good 
and  evil  spirits.  But  when  his  eyes  sought  the  invisible 
reality  behind  the  phenomena  of  nature  and  he  whispered 
"Abba,"  "Father,"  he  recognized  the  inherent  Tightness, 
rationality  and  goodness  of  the  ultimate  reality.  And 
yet  this  was  no  superficial  view  conveniently  overlooking 
the  facts  that  create  difficulties.  The  gifted  poet  to  whom 
we  owe  the  Dialogues  in  the  Book  of  Job  saw  far  less 
clearly  than  Jesus  the  fallacy  of  the  common  belief  that 
the  world  is  so  arranged  as  to  secure  prosperity  to  the 
good  and  to  make  adversity  a  sign  of  wickedness,  or  that 
to  be  right  the  world  must  be  so  ordered.  The  men  on 


362  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZAEETH 

whom  the  tower  of  Siloam  fell  were  not  sinners  above 
those  who  escaped.  The  Father  lets  his  sun  shine  on  the 
good  and  the  bad,  and  he  allows  his  rain  to  fall  on  the 
just  and  the  unjust.  That,  according  to  Jesus,  is  right. 
He  perceived  a  law  of  compensation  working  with  unfail- 
ing accuracy.  "When  a  man  prays  in  public,  that  he  may 
be  seen  of  men,  and  men  may  see  him,  he  has  his  reward. 
In  the  midst  of  his  poverty  the  righteous  man  is  rich,  and 
when  he  is  persecuted  for  righteousness'  sake,  he  shares 
the  joy  that  swells  the  prophet's  heart.  He  who  loses  his 
life  for  the  sake  of  the  kingdom  of  heaven  in  reality  finds 
it.  Jesus  looked  into  the  depths  of  his  own  consciousness, 
and  saw  that,  to  be  right,  man's  words  and  deeds  must 
flow  from  a  correct  disposition,  and  that  to  be  right  this 
disposition  must  be  characterized  by  the  reverence  and 
obedience,  the  freedom  and  confidence,  the  gratitude  and 
affection  of  a  son,  as  well  as  by  the  justice  and  equity,  the 
sympathy  and  kindness,  the  considerateness  and  forbear- 
ance of  a  brother.  This  supreme  regard  for  the  inner 
reality  makes  the  thought  of  Jesus  so  significant.  Could 
the  many  in  all  lands  whose  minds  are  agitated  by  the 
great  questions  of  philosophy  be  brought  to  his  confi- 
dence in  the  essential  Tightness  of  the  course  of  nature, 
his  healthy  acquiescence  in  the  necessary  conditions  of 
man's  life,  his  chastened  joy  in  existence,  his  filial  and 
fraternal  attitude,  his  calm  indifference  to  outward  seem- 
ing, his  deep  concern  for  the  springs  of  action,  the  hidden 
fountains  of  life,  their  vision  would  grow  clearer,  their 
grasp  upon  the  important  elements  of  each  problem  firmer, 
and  their  reasoning  less  exposed  to  the  danger  of  being 
vitiated  by  undue  moral  influences. 

In  one  province  of  art  Jesus  was  a  master.  No  man 
ever  spoke  as  he.  The  beauty  of  his  speech  was  as 
marked  as  its  originality.  Even  the  handful  of  frag- 
ments that  has  come  down  to  us  gives  an  impression  of 
his  extraordinary  power.  Though  Oriental  oratory 
abounds  in  figurative  language  and  illustrative  anecdote, 
and  volumes  of  wise  sayings  prized  "as  apples  of  gold  in 


THE  LEADERSHIP  OF  JESUS  363 

baskets  of  silver"  have  been  preserved  from  Hebrew  an- 
tiquity, there  is  nothing  that  even  approaches  the  parable 
of  Jesus.  It  has  the  excellence  that  forbids  imitation. 
There  are  works  of  art  so  perfect  in  their  kind  that  the 
world  instinctively  leaves  the  sacred  ground  preempted 
by  genius  for  other  fields  of  endeavor.  The  beauty  of 
nature  impressed  itself  upon  the  sensitive  mind  of  Jesus, 
and  was  reflected  in  the  simplicity  and  grandeur,  the  har- 
mony and  radiancy,  of  his  speech.  Each  work  of  art  in 
the  Galilean  master 's  gallery  stands  forth  in  maiden 
purity,  chaste,  modest  and  unconscious  of  its  loveliness, 
yet  breathes  the  breath  of  life.  These  characters  of  his 
creation  will  live  as  long  as  the  human  race.  Churches 
may  rise  and  fall,  theological  systems  may  come  and  go, 
works  of  great  merit  may  be  dropped  into  the  limbo  of 
forgotten  things,  but  the  love  of  inspiring  art  will  itself 
secure  against  oblivion  the  Good  Samaritan,  Dives  and 
Lazarus,  the  Foolish  Virgins,  the  Prodigal  Son,  the  Sow- 
ers, the  Widow,  the  Shepherd,  and  their  companions. 
Jesus  may  have  known  next  to  nothing  of  sculpture  and 
painting,  of  music  and  drama,  and  may  have  had  no  idea 
of  their  place  in  the  moral  and  spiritual  development  of 
man ;  but  he  knew  as  few  know  the  art  of  touching  all  the 
chords  that  vibrate  within  the  soul,  the  emotions,  the 
will  and  the  mind,  and  to  lift  and  refine  whenever 
he  touched  them.  It  is  better  that  men  should  eat 
than  that  they  should  starve ;  but  without  art  the  richest 
community  is  a  poor-house.  Yet  art  passes  quickly  from 
splendor  and  ripeness  to  a  state  of  putrescence.  If  its 
educative  and  ennobling  influence  is  to  be  maintained  it 
must  be  held  to  high  ideals.  The  tendencies  that  drag  it 
down  can  only  be  counteracted  by  a  general  improve- 
ment of  the  moral  tone.  This  the  spirit  of  Jesus  never 
fails  to  accomplish. 

The  gradual  evolution  of  society  is  never  the  carrying 
out  in  detail  of  some  seer's  dream  or  some  reformer's 
scheme.  The  noblest  Utopias  embody  features  that  in  the 
light  of  maturer  thought  and  riper  experience  appear  un- 


364  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZAEETH 

desirable  or  positively  harmful.     The  best  laid  plans  of 
reform   contain   some   dangerous   and   unwise   elements. 
They  should  be  judged  by  their  general  trend,  their  most 
distinctive  features,  and  their  spirit.     However  slow  the 
progress  may  seem,  the  leadership  in  the  thoughts  and  af- 
fairs of  men  goes  ultimately  to  those  whose  ideas  are 
greatest  and  have  most  intrinsic  worth,  and  whose  pur- 
poses are  most  benevolent  and  have  the  widest  reach. 
The  Sermon  on  the  Mount  may  be  far  from  giving  a  com- 
plete programme  of  social  reform  or  a  complete  theory 
of  social  relationship.     But  in  these  and  other  utterances 
of  Jesus  he  expresses  ideas  of  such  far-reaching  impor- 
tance, lays  down  principles  so  startling  and  revolutionary, 
that,  if  they  should  in  the  main  commend  themselves  to 
men  and  find  embodiment  in  their  social  life,  a  transforma- 
tion of  human  society  would  be  the  result,  and  his  leader- 
ship would  become  a  more  momentous  fact  than  it  has 
ever  been.     It  was  his  conviction,  to  which  he  was  faithful 
even  to  the  end,  that  men  should  love  their  enemies,  do 
good  to  those  who  use  them  ill,  abstain  from  all  retalia- 
tion, and  overcome  evil  with  good.     The  adoption  of  this 
principle  would  abolish  war,  do  away  with  armies  and 
navies  that  are  a  constant  menace  to  the  world,  send  mil- 
lions of  men  back  to  productive  and  profitable  work,  and 
give  millions  of  capital  to  useful  industry  and  needed  im- 
provements,  to  education,  art  and  science.     As  yet  no 
Christian  denomination  except  the  little  body  of  Quakers 
accepts  the  view  of  Jesus  in  its  literal  and  unqualified 
statement,  but  outside  of  the  Church  there  is  a  growing 
disposition  to  regard  his  attitude  as  both  wise  and  prac- 
tical.    It  is  true  that  the  millions  in  Europe  and  America 
who  do  not  count  themselves  as  Christians,  but  who  stren- 
uously oppose  war,  are  more  or  less  inclined  to  differ  with 
Jesus  as  to  the  possibility  or  desirability  of  loving  one's 
enemies.     Nevertheless  they  are  in  perfect  agreement  with 
him  on  the  crucial  point,  that  one  nation  should  not  treat 
another  nation  as  an  enemy,  and  go  forth  to  kill  its  peo- 
ple on  account  of  some  slight  or  injury  done  to  it,  or  be- 


THE  LEADERSHIP  OF  JESUS  365 

cause  of  a  difference  in  religious  views  or  social  customs. 
And  great  would  be  the  gain  in  refinement  of  sentiment, 
gentleness  of  temper  arid  nobility  of  character,  could  they 
be  persuaded  to  adopt  more  of  the  principle  of  Jesus. 
This  principle  goes  far  beyond  the  establishment  of  inter- 
national arbitration.  But  this  is  a  step  in  the  right  di- 
rection. The  day  when  the  battleflags  of  nations  shall 
be  furled  in  the  parliament  of  man,  will  be  a  day  of  tri- 
umph to  the  Galilean  prophet.  Nor  can  the  approach  of 
this  day  be  doubted.  Cannibalism,  once  rampant,  scarcely 
exists  in  the  world  to-day.  Slavery,  once  universal,  is  to- 
day banished  from  the  civilized  world.  War  belongs  to 
the  same  category  of  institutions,  and  will  fare  as  they. 

Jesus  applied  this  principle  in  other  directions.  He 
criticised  severely  the  law  of  retaliation  which  was  re- 
garded as  essential  to  the  welfare  of  society  and  lay  at 
the  basis  of  all  administration  of  justice.  "An  eye  for  an 
eye  and  a  tooth  for  a  tooth "  was  a  legal  enactment,  a 
provision  of  the  Jewish  penal  code.  Jesus  rejected  it  as 
out  of  harmony  with  his  conception  of  righteousness.  If 
a  man's  eye  had  been  gouged  out  by  his  enemy,  Jesus 
would  not  have  him  secure  through  judicial  proceedings  a 
similar  operation  upon  the  eye  of  this  enemy.  According 
to  his  judgment,  a  higher  righteousness  would  be  shown 
by  returning  good  for  evil,  by  seeking  to  eradicate  the 
angry  passion,  to  awaken  a  sense  of  shame  and  to  arouse 
a  desire  for  reconciliation  through  kindly  treatment.  The 
carrying  out  of  his  idea  would  lead  to  an  abandonment  of 
the  current  systems  of  punitive  justice,  and  the  introduc- 
tion of  methods  designed  to  prevent  the  development  of 
criminal  tendencies  and  to  effect  a  change  in  the  criminal 
by  example  and  environment.  It  would  render  obsolete 
both  capital  punishment  and  enforced  idleness  in  jails.  It 
would  tend  to  remove  that  spirit  of  violence  which  ex- 
presses itself  in  murders  and  lynchings.  Concerning  the 
means  to  be  employed  in  order  to  cure  mental  and  moral 
disease,  and  to  protect  society  against  its  ravages  there 
may  be  room  for  differences  of  opinion;  and  it  may  be 


366  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZAEETH 

doubted  whether  Jesus  had  given  much  thought  to  the 
various  applications  of  his  principle.  But  his  general  con- 
ception of  how  men  should  deal  with  evil-doers  is  gaming 
recognition  in  modern  society. 

Closely  allied  with  the  treatment  of  moral  perverts  is 
the  passing  of  judgment  upon  men.  The  advice  of  Jesus 
was  "Judge  not!"  With  his  deep  intuition  he  perceived 
how  impossible  it  is  for  any  man  to  gain  such  a  knowledge 
of  the  subtle  workings  of  another  mind,  such  a  freedom 
from  prejudice,  and  such  a  disinterested,  impartial  and 
sympathetic  disposition  as  to  justify  his  assuming  the  part 
of  a  judge,  while  his  deeply  religious  nature  shrank  from 
assigning  to  fallible  man  a  function  belonging  only  to 
God.  The  present  generation  appreciates  as  men  have 
never  done  before  the  tremendous  power  of  heredity  and 
environment,  the  complexity  of  human  nature,  the  multi- 
tudinous motives  leading  up  to  every  act,  the  impossibility 
of  ascertaining  all  these  influences,  and  the  incompetency 
of  judgments  based  on  assumptions  of  knowledge  not 
possessed  and  of  freedom  not  exercised.  Minds  influenced 
by  modern  science  are  more  and  more  inclined  to  abstain 
from  judging.  Even  judicial  proceedings  assume  increas- 
ingly the  character  of  scientific  investigations  leading  to 
conclusions,  tentative  and  subject  to  revision,  as  to  the 
most  expedient  course  to  be  pursued  in  order  to  secure 
for  all  members  of  society  the  greatest  measure  of  profit 
and  happiness  during  their  life  on  the  earth.  If  the 
thought  of  Jesus  should  become  widely  prevalent,  the 
tendency  would  be  to  eliminate  all  condemnation,  and  to 
narrow  the  sphere  of  judicial  inquiry.  His  words  to  the 
woman  taken  in  adultery,  "Neither  do  I  condemn  thee," 
indicate  his  customary  unwillingness  to  drag  before  the 
gaze  of  men  and  submit  to  their  judgment  what  essentially 
belongs  to  the  privacy  of  life.  In  this  society  may  wisely 
follow  his  example. 

Jesus  laid  down  the  principle  that  when  men  live  to- 
gether as  they  should  there  is  none  among  them  who  lords 
it  over  the  rest  or  who  exercises  authority  over  them,  but 


THE  LEADEKSHIP  OF  JESUS  367 

they  vie  with  one  another  in  rendering  service.  It  would 
be  impossible  to  reject  more  emphatically  the  divine  right 
of  kings,  or  to  express  more  beautifully  the  ideal  of  de- 
mocracy. It  is  not  only  the  reign  of  anointed  monarchs 
that  Jesus  looks  upon  as  wrong,  but  all  lordship.  His 
ideal  is  not  a  dead  level  of  mediocrity.  He  recognizes  the 
legitimacy  of  the  desire  for  greatness.  But  greatness 
should  not  consist  in  power  to  rule  over  men.  It  should 
consist  in  increased  power  to  serve.  With  the  growing 
demand  for  popular  self-government  and  the  constant  ex- 
tension of  the  suffrage,  it  is  only  a  matter  of  time  when 
the  kings  and  emperors  of  Europe  and  Asia  shall  have  lost 
such  autocratic  powers  as  still  remain  to  them,  and  shall 
have  been  obliged  to  surrender  their  dynastic  claims.  Far 
more  serious  is  the  question  how  long  the  oligarchies  of 
wealth  that  form  the  real  power  behind  all  governments 
and  exercise  a  lordship  kings  might  envy,  shall  be  able 
to  maintain  themselves.  But  vastly  more  important  than 
the  elimination  of  irresponsible  authority  in  any  form  is 
the  temper  of  the  developing  democracies.  Ill  fares  so- 
ciety when  ruled  by  mobs.  The  power  wielded  by  masses 
of  men  egged  on  to  deeds  of  violence  and  injustice  by 
hatred,  selfishness  and  thirst  for  vengeance  is  never  so 
terrible  as  when  it  is  used  in  the  name  of  the  whole  people. 
Then  the  reaction  inevitably  comes.  The  horrors  of  the 
Napoleonic  wars  follow  the  horrors  of  the  French  revolu- 
tion. A  people  can  successfully  manage  its  own  affairs 
only  in  proportion  as  its  citizens  are  enlightened  and  un- 
selfish, capable  of  service  and  eager  to  render  it,  regard- 
ful of  the  rights  of  others  and  anxious  to  help  the  largest 
number,  content  with  giving  directions  as  to  the  general 
policy,  and  willing  to  leave  the  details  to  specially  trained 
and  responsible  servants,  courageous  in  their  protests 
against  wrong,  and  peaceful  in  their  methods  of  righting 
it.  When  in  a  quiet  and  dignified  manner  Jesus  criticised 
a  tax  imposed  on  him  that  was  prescribed  in  the  Law,  and 
yet  paid  it  under  protest  so  as  not  to  cause  offense,  he  set 
an  admirable  example  of  the  most  successful  social  agita- 


368  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZAEETH 

tion.  It  would  be  wise  in  those  who  have  earnestly  at 
heart  the  cause  of  popular  self-government  to  follow  the 
leadership  of  Jesus,  whose  aim  is  sufficiently  high  for  the 
most  thoroughgoing  reformer,  and  whose  method  is  justi- 
fied by  the  lessons  of  history. 

To  maintain  the  authority  of  kings  and  governments, 
the  obedience  of  soldiers,  the  orthodoxy  of  theologians, 
the  veracity  of  witnesses,  the  fidelity  of  husbands  and  the 
subordination  of  wives,  the  oath  has  been  deemed  a  neces- 
sity. Jesus  said,  "Swear  not  at  all!"  The  nominally 
Christian  state  has  never  recognized  the  wisdom  of  his 
counsel,  and  the  Church  for  its  convenience  has  furnished 
a  wholly  improbable  interpretation,  by  which  Jesus  did 
not  have  in  mind  any  oath  that  really  meant  anything,  but 
only  the  senseless  curse-words  with  which  the  ordinary 
conversation  of  some  men  is  too  redolent.  The  early 
Christians,  the  Baptists  of  the  sixteenth  century,  and  the 
Quakers  understood  him,  and  manifested  by  their  lives 
the  profitableness  of  his  teaching,  since  no  legitimate 
interest  of  society  suffered  by  it,  and  the  regard  for  truth 
and  the  fidelity  to  duty  on  which  all  social  order  rests 
were  strongly  enhanced  by  it.  Thoughtful  men  at  the 
present  time  look  upon  the  oath  as  an  anachronism  in  a 
society  that  does  not  demand  or  enforce  belief  in  a  god. 
Believers  in  republican  institutions  regard  oaths  of  al- 
legiance to  monarchs  and  dynasties  as  prejudicial  to  the 
best  interests  of  a  people.  When  a  soldier  is  requested  to 
swear  that  he  will  obey  his  sovereign  without  a  question, 
even  though  he  order  him  to  shoot  his  father  and  mother, 
or  to  follow  blindly  his  general,  even  though  he  lead  him 
to  deeds  of  brutality  and  treachery,  this  is  so  palpably  an 
insult  to  his  manhood  that  civilized  men  would  not  toler- 
ate it  for  a  moment,  were  it  not  for  the  mistaken  notion 
that  differences  between  nations  can  only  be  settled  by 
war,  and  that  a  strong  army  pledged  to  unquestioning 
obedience  is  a  protection  to  the  state.  The  more  liberal 
sections  of  the  Church  are  thoroughly  ashamed  of  the 
oaths  by  which  ministers  and  teachers  bind  themselves  not 


THE  LEADEKSHIP  OF  JESUS  369 

to  depart  from  certain  doctrinal  statements,  not  to  ad- 
vance in  the  knowledge  of  the  truth,  and  people  outside 
the  Church  look  with  pity  upon  men  who  are  not  free  to 
investigate  and  to  proclaim  their  convictions,  with  cen- 
sure often  upon  those  who  in  spite  of  their  oath  claim  lib- 
erty of  conscience,  and  invariably  with  more  or  less  dis- 
trust upon  leaders  who  are  not  expected  to  lead.  Truth- 
ful men  will  not  lie  in  a  court  or  anywhere  else,  and  in 
this  age  of  the  world  few  wicked  men  are  deterred  by  the 
fear  of  hell  from  bearing  false  testimony  in  a  court  or 
anywhere  else.  If  the  relations  of  man  and  woman  are 
based  on  true  love,  no  oath  can  give  an  added  guarantee 
of  faithfulness ;  if  love  is  not  the  basis,  no  oath  can  make 
the  union  moral.  There  is  no  reason  why  a  woman  should 
pledge  herself  to  obey  a  man.  While  strong  prejudices 
still  prevail  against  the  view  of  Jesus,  and  powerful 
interests  are  arrayed  against  it,  the  tendency  of  modern 
thought  is  distinctly  in  favor  of  his  position.  If  men 
would  follow  where  he  leads,  they  would  come  to  a  society 
where  oaths  are  never  heard. 

Some  of  the  most  delicate  and  important  social  ques- 
tions of  the  present  day  deal  with  the  economic,  political 
and  domestic  position  of  woman.  It  is  not  probable  that 
Jesus  was  led  to  consider  the  possibility  of  woman's  eco- 
nomic independence,  or  the  desirability  of  her  political 
emancipation.  But  he  had  occasion  to  meditate  pro- 
foundly upon  the  treatment  accorded  to  woman  in  his 
age  and  by  his  people,  and  he  expressed  in  word  and  deed 
convictions  on  this  subject  that  are  as  important  to-day 
as  they  were  then.  When  he  criticised  Moses  for  hav- 
ing given  in  the  Law  a  concession  to  the  men,  on  account 
of  the  hardness  of  their  hearts,  contrary  to  the  will  of  God 
as  expressed  in  the  beginning  in  the  creative  act,  he  em- 
phasized the  equal  right  of  man  and  woman  in  the  mar- 
riage relation.  In  view  of  this  unmistakable  import  of 
his  saying,  the  errors  that  lie  on  the  surface  fade  into  in- 
significance. It  is  readily  seen  to-day  that  Moses  had 
nothing  to  do  with  the  Deuteronomic  legislation,  that  the 
24 


370  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZAEETH 

dismissal  of  wives  was  no  innovation  at  the  time  when 
this  code  was  written,  that  there  never  was  a  first  man, 
that  man  in  primitive  conditions  did  not  practise  mon- 
ogamy, that  the  law  was  very  far  in  advance  of  the  rules 
regulating  sexual  intercourse  in  earlier  forms  of  social 
life,1  that  this  law  was  intended  to  secure  to  woman,  and 
in  reality  did  afford  her,  protection,  inasmuch  as  by  the 
letter  of  dismissal  the  husband  renounced  all  his  rights 
over  her,  and  could  not  legally  interfere  with  her  mar- 
riage to  another  man,  and  that  the  absolute  indissolubility 
of  marriage  would  result  in  greater  misery  to  woman  than 
that  produced  by  the  law,  by  perpetuating  immoral  rela- 
tions, annulling  the  existing  rights,  and  making  her  sla- 
very complete.  The  important  fact  is  that  his  sympathy 
with  woman  led  him  to  condemn  the  Mosaic  legislation  in 
this  matter,  and  to  contrast  its  discrimination  in  favor  of 
the  man  with  the  equality  implied  in  the  narrative  of 
man's  creation.  At  bottom  it  is  an  appeal  from  human 
legislation  to  the  divinely  ordained  nature  of  man  and 
woman.  Such  is  the  relation  between  man  and  woman  as 
a  result  of  their  creation,  and  consequent  natural  pecul- 
iarity of  forming  a  unity  by  supplementing  each  other, 
that  it  cannot  be  right  to  allow  a  man  to  send  away  his 
wife  in  order  to  take  another,  and  thus  to  leave  a  woman 
at  the  mercy  of  her  husband's  caprice.  In  so  far  as  Jesus 
by  taking  this  position  declared  his  conviction  that  man 
should  not  be  accorded  rights  withheld  from  woman  in 
the  married  relation,  he  made  himself  one  of  the  great 
champions  of  woman's  cause. 
That  his  attitude  on  this  question  was  born  of  sympathy 

1  On  the  other  hand,  it  is  decidedly  inferior  to  the  Law  of  Ham- 
murabi, which  recognizes  the  right  of  a  woman  to  divorce  a  husband 
she  cannot  love  and  marry  "the  man  of  her  heart/'  Code  of  Ham- 
murabi, ed.  E.  F.  Harper,  Chicago,  1904,  §142,  Cf.  §137.  This  code 
confirms  the  impression  already  gained  that  both  socially  and  econom- 
ically woman's  position  was  higher  in  Babylonia  than  in  Syria.  Cf. 
the  interesting  observations  on  woman  as  a  cultic  official  in  Babylonia 
by  I.  Peritz  in  Journal  of  Biblical  Literature,  1898,  p.  119  f .,  and 
note  the  civic  rights  of  hierodules  recognized  by  the  Code, 


THE  LEADERSHIP  OF  JESUS  371 

with  the  weaker  part,  is  manifest  from  his  protest  against 
social  ostracism  of  woman.  He  not  only  administered 
stinging  rebukes  to  the  pious  and  respectable  scribes  and 
Pharisees  who  cast  off  their  wives  that  they  might  marry 
more  desirable  women,  and  then  hypocritically  drew 
about  them  their  skirts  not  to  come  in  polluting  con- 
tact with  those  whom  they  had  themselves  driven  into  a 
life  of  shame,  but  he  fairly  invited  adverse  criticism  upon 
his  conduct  by  eating  and  drinking  with  women  of  ill 
repute.  Neither  did  he  think  that  aught  would  be  gained 
by  socially  ostracizing  the  scribe  and  the  Pharisee,  It 
seems  to  have  been  the  prevailing  view  in  the  church  that 
his  attitude  and  example  in  this  respect  should  not  be 
recommended.  The  policy  of  Christian  society  has  dif- 
fered little  from  that  of  Jewish  society  attacked  by  Jesus. 
In  order  that  the  home  might  be  protected,  thousands  of 
tender-hearted  women  who  have  loved  not  wisely  but  too 
well,  thousands  of  ignorant  and  confiding  victims  of  man's 
lust,  thousands  of  weak  and  sorely  tempted  children  un- 
able by  the  pittance  that  their  hands  could  earn  to  keep 
the  wolf  from  the  door,  have  been  thrust  out  of  society 
to  form  a  class  by  themselves,  living  in  idleness,  shut  off 
from  helpful  influences  and  noble  associations,  forced  to 
simulate  affection  or  to  center  all  attention  on  the  sexual 
function,  outraged  by  police  inspection,  scorned  by  those 
they  cared  for,  preyed  upon  by  persons  coining  money  out 
of  their  misfortune,  themselves  becoming  misers  by  the 
unnatural  trade,  or  reckless  spendthrifts  during  the  brief 
hey-day  of  their  beauty.  But  this  segregation  has  in  no 
way  tended  to  protect  the  home.  It  has  only  separated 
one  group  of  women  from  another  to  the  physical  and 
moral  injury  of  both.  The  men  have  not  been  subject  to 
such  a  division.  Whether  they  have  thoughtlessly  yielded 
to  an  impulse  of  youthful  ardor,  or  sought  an  illicit  com- 
pensation for  their  social  or  economic  inability  to  con- 
tract marriage,  or  wickedly  designed  and  brought  about 
the  ruin  of  young  lives  for  the  satisfaction  of  their  morbid 
cravings,  they  have  often  seemed  to  go  scot-free,  and  re- 


372  THE  PROPHET  OF  NAZAEETH 

tained  their  position  in  society.  It  is  natural  that  a  sense 
of  the  injustice  of  such  discrimination  should  lead  to  a 
demand  for  a  similar  social  ostracism  to  be  applied  to  the 
men.  But  it  is  perfectly  clear  that  this  plan  cannot  be 
carried  out,  and  that  our  present  evils  would  not  be  reme- 
died, if  it  could.  The  maturest  study  of  the  situation 
indicates  the  wisdom  of  the  attitude  of  Jesus.  Let  hu- 
man intercourse  be  natural,  kind,  sympathetic,  free  from 
hypocrisy,  self-righteousness  and  condescension,  dignified 
and  self-controlled,  yet  marked  by  thoughtfulness  and 
chivalry. 

This  disposition  on  the  part  of  Jesus  is  all  the  more 
significant  as  in  his  own  life  he  seems  to  have  suppressed 
the  sexual  instincts.  He  was  a  celibate  and  apparently 
commended  to  others  celibacy  for  the  sake  of  the  king- 
dom of  heaven.  As  an  answer  to  the  question  whether  it 
is  well  to  marry  at  all  in  view  of  the  demanded  indis- 
solubility  of  marriage,  Matth.  xix,  10-12,  can  only  be 
understood  as  affirming  that  celibacy  is  to  be  preferred, 
especially  by  those  who  care  for  the  kingdom  of  heaven.1 
And  celibacy  with  Jesus  meant  absolute  continence.  This 
is  evident  from  Matth.  v,  27-30,  where  the  man  who  looks 
upon  a  woman  to  lust  after  her  is  characterized  as  an 
adulterer  and  the  sacrifice  of  a  member  for  the  salvation 
of  the  whole  body  is  recommended.  According  to  Luke 
xx,  27  ff.  and  parallels  those  who  are  accounted  worthy  to 
rise  from  the  dead  and  have  a  share  in  the  world  to  come 
neither  marry  nor  are  given  in  marriage,  but  are  like 
angels  in  heaven.  Our  fragmentary  record  of  his  sayings 
does  not  tell  us  whether  Jesus  ever  suggested  that  men 
might  marry,  and  women  bear  children,  and  parents  bring 
up  their  little  ones  for  the  sake  of  the  kingdom  of  heaven. 
Would  that  it  did !  But  a  warning  against  entering  upon 
marital  relations  without  a  careful  consideration  of  per- 
sonal fitness  for  propagating  human  life  is  as  timely  now 
as  in  the  first  century ;  an  admonition  not  to  cherish  sexual 
desires  tending  to  express  themselves  in  faithless  deeds  is 

1  The  text  referred  to  is,  however,  of  doubtful  genuineness. 


THE  LEADERSHIP  OF  JESUS  373 

as  necessary;  and  a  protest  against  giving  to  the  sexual 
relations  an  exaggerated  importance  is  as  wholesome  as 
then. 

But  Jesus  not  only  objected  to  the  law  of  divorce  be- 
cause of  its  discrimination  in  favor  of  the  men,  and  its 
permission  to  sunder  relations  originally  intended  to  be 
indissoluble ;  he  also  indicated  his  disapproval  of  the  pun- 
ishment of  a  woman  taken  in  adultery.  The  law  pre- 
scribed that  such  a  woman  should  be  put  to  death  (Lev. 
xx,  10;  Deut.  xxii,  22  ff.)-  If  Jesus  had  believed  that  the 
law  on  this  point  expressed  the  will  of  God,  and  that  the 
welfare  of  the  community  depended  upon  the  punishment 
of  such  crimes,  he  would  naturally  have  referred  to  the 
passages  in  the  law  that  determined  the  procedure  in  this 
case.  Instead  of  that,  he  skillfully  shifted  the  whole  ques- 
tion from  the  ground  of  legal  procedure  to  that  of  justice 
and  fairness.  "Let  him  who  is  without  sin  among  you 
first  cast  a  stone  at  her!"  The  moral  effect  of  these 
words,  revealing  like  a  flash  of  lightning  how  little  right 
these  men  had  to  bring  about  this  woman's  death,  was 
such  as  to  prevent  any  action  on  their  part.  But  if  this 
principle  were  admitted,  and  the  administrators  of  jus- 
tice were  to  consider  not  only  whether  a  crime  has  been 
committed,  and  what  the  legally  prescribed  penalty  is, 
but  also  whether  their  own  lives  and  hearts  were  so  free 
from  sin  that  they  would  feel  competent  to  condemn  a 
fellow-man,  the  most  far-reaching  consequences  would  fol- 
low. In  the  case  of  a  woman  taken  in  adultery  the  prog- 
ress of  civilization  has  to  a  certain  extent  justified  the 
position  of  Jesus.  In  most  civilized  countries  she  is 
neither  burned  at  the  stake  nor  stoned  to  death.  She  is 
still  set  in  the  pillory,  made  a  target  for  a  thousand  ar- 
rows, publicly  exposed  to  insolent  questioning  and  ribald 
jest,  obliged  to  furnish  an  interesting  chapter  to  the 
chronique  scandaleuse,  forced  to  tear  out  her  heart  and 
reveal  the  intimacies  of  her  life,  driven  under  the  lash  of 
judicial  inquiry  to  gratify  the  hunger  for  piquant  details 
of  countless  newspaper  readers.  Nor  are  the  cruelty  and 


374  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZAEETH 

indecency  of  these  divorce  proceedings  to  any  marked 
extent  abated  by  the  fact  that  the  erring  husband  may  be 
subjected  to  the  same  treatment.  Here  again  the  matur- 
est  reflection  of  the  age  moves  in  the  direction  of  the 
thought  of  Jesus.  The  scene  which  closes  with  the  shame- 
faced departure  of  the  would-be  judges,  the  solemn  word, 
"Neither  do  I  condemn  thee,"  and  the  return  of  the 
woman  to  her  fire-side  with  the  impression  of  a  new  and 
nobler  type  of  humanity,  prefigures  the  course  of  social 
development  that  the  human  race  is  likely  to  follow.  The 
chaste  and  loving  heart  of  Jesus  protested  against  the  in- 
dignities heaped  upon  woman  by  man,  his  wantonness  in 
using  her,  his  cruelty  in  abandoning  her,  his  hypocrisy  in 
condemning  her.  In  the  same  spirit  we  may  go  on  to  de- 
mand for  woman  equally  great  advantages  of  education, 
equally  good  opportunities  of  economic  independence, 
equal  rights  of  citizenship,  freedom  to  work  out  her  own 
life,  to  seek  or  to  be  sought,  to  give  or  to  withhold,  respect 
for  her  private  relations,  for  the  intimacies  of  maiden- 
hood, wif  ehood  and  motherhood. 

Profoundly  significant  are  also  the  views  that  Jesus  ex- 
pressed in  regard  to  wealth.  There  are  indeed  numer- 
ous questions  upon  this  subject  that  in  all  probability 
never  presented  themselves  in  any  form  to  his  mind,  and 
whose  far-reaching  moral  significance  he  would  not  have 
been  prepared  to  grasp.  Even  a  man  far  more  familiar 
than  he  can  have  been  with  the  economic  condition  of  the 
Roman  empire  and  the  other  kingdoms  of  the  world  would 
have  been  quite  unable  to  understand  the  commercial  and 
industrial  situation  of  the  present  time.  The  questions 
that  confront  us  affecting  the  relations  of  capital  and 
labor,  the  control  of  either  through  the  suffrage,  the  free- 
dom or  constraint  of  trade,  the  principles  and  methods  of 
taxation,  the  rate  of  wages,  the  standard,  denomination, 
and  issuance  of  money,  cannot  be  solved  without  a  careful 
observation  of  the  facts  of  modern  life  and  deep  reflection 
upon  the  significance  of  these  facts,  upon  economic  laws 
and  social  tendencies.  Each  age  must  grapple  with  its 


THE  LEADEESHIP  OF  JESUS  375 

own  problems.  But  behind  these  there  loom  up  vaster 
ones  that  belong  to  all  ages.  Jesus  watched  the  effect  of 
wealth  upon  the  character  of  men.  He  also  observed  the 
influence  upon  character  of  the  practice  of  sharing  with 
others.  And  he  perceived  both  the  danger  and  the  need- 
lessness  of  worry. 

As  a  reason  why  a  man  should  not  lay  up  treasures  for 
himself  on  the  earth  he  pointed  to  the  danger  of  this  occu- 
pation. The  mind  and  the  affections  would  naturally 
center  upon  the  object  of  constant  pursuit.  Longing  for 
possessions,  respect  for  wealth,  worship  of  Mammon  would 
insensibly  take  the  place  of  love  of  God  and  fellow-man. 
A  desire  for  more  than -is  needed  and  more  than  is  fair 
would  unconsciously  lead  to  a  disregard  for  the  needs  and 
rights  of  others,  and  consequently  become  a  source  of  all 
evil.  It  was  this  conception  of  the  detriment  to  character 
inevitably  resulting  from  the  pursuit  of  wealth,  and  not 
a  notion  that  he  was  himself  exceptionally  prone  to  the 
vice  of  avarice,  that  caused  him  deliberately  to  choose  the 
poor  man's  lot,  though  he  might  have  made  money  as  a 
rabbi  or  exorcist.  It  was  this  sense  of  danger  in  the  pos- 
session of  wealth,  and  not  any  extraordinary  cupidity 
manifest  in  the  attitude  of  the  young  man  who  so  strongly 
attracted  him,  that  led  him  to  give  his  famous  advice.  In 
thus  emphasizing  the  deteriorating  effect  of  wealth  upon 
character,  Jesus  presented  a  conviction,  the  truth  of  which 
is  borne  out  by  the  observations  of  thoughtful  men,  and 
should  have  a  wider  recognition  in  the  world  than  it  has. 
Even  if,  with  the  advance  of  human  civilization,  social 
conditions  should  undergo  such  a  change  as  to  eliminate 
completely  the  type  of  poverty  now  existing  as  well  as  the 
abnormal  fortunes  that  at  present  constitute  so  great  a 
menace  to  society,  the  spirit  which  seeks  for  things  with- 
out knowing  how  to  use  them,  heaps  up  treasures  for  its 
own  satisfaction  only,  desires  more  than  it  needs,  delights 
in  individual  comfort  more  than  in  the  common  weal,  and 
loves  the  things  that  perish  with  the  using  better  than  the 
spiritual  possessions  of  man,  would  still  be  a  danger.  As 


376  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZAEETH 

conditions  are  to-day,  it  is  perfectly  evident  that  just  in 
proportion  as  the  laying  up  of  treasures  for  himself  be- 
comes the  absorbing  interest  in  a  man's  life,  justice  and 
mercy,  regard  for  the  rights,  liberties  and  welfare  of 
others,  search  after  truth,  love  of  goodness,  simplicity, 
uprightness  and  moral  heroism,  tend  to  disappear.  There 
may  be  no  St.  Peter  at  the  gate  of  heaven  revising  the  care- 
fully considered  judgment  of  the  church  in  such  matters, 
but  it  remains  a  truth  that,  in  the  very  nature  of  things, 
a  man  whose  heart  is  set  on  riches  cannot  enter  the  king- 
dom of  righteousness,  love  and  truth.  It  should  therefore 
be  the  endeavor  of  all  good  men  so  to  modify  by  wise 
measures  the  methods  in  vogue  at  present  as  to  render  it 
increasingly  difficult  for  a  man  to  secure  an  inordinate 
share  of  the  common  wealth  to  the  ruin  of  his  character. 

This  attitude  toward  wealth  does  not  seem  to  have 
sprung  from  a  morbid  love  of  poverty  for  its  own  sake.  On 
the  contrary  Jesus  seems  to  have  regarded  poverty  as  an 
evil.  In  the  coming  kingdom  there  were  to  be  no  paupers. 
His  gospel  was  good  tidings  to  the  poor.  His  sympathy 
went  out  to  the  needy  ones.  He  shared  with  them  his 
homely  fare,  his  bread  and  fish.  Considering  how  difficult 
it  was  for  a  poor  man  to  secure  even  a  much  needed  loan  of 
money,  and  to  pay  the  interest  on  it,  he  counseled  those  who 
had  money  to  lend  gladly,  and  to  look  for  no  interest.  Con- 
sidering how  difficult  it  was  for  many  a  man  in  destitute 
circumstances  to  assume  any  financial  obligation,  he  ad- 
vised his  disciples  to  share  such  things  as  they  had  with 
the  needy.  A  saying  that  escaped  the  attention  of  the 
evangelists  declares  that  "it  is  more  blessed  to  give  than 
to  receive."1  In  order,  however,  to  enjoy  the  full  bene- 
fit of  this  blessing,  a  man  should  avoid  not  only  public 
attention  but  also  self-consciousness  and  pride.  He  must 
not  let  his  left  hand  know  what  his  right  hand  does.  A 
sense  of  decency  should  prevent  him  from  feeding  his 
starving  brothers  in  public.  Sharing  with  others  should 
be  as  natural  as  breathing,  and  as  unconsciously  per- 

*Acts,  xx,  35. 


THE  LEADERSHIP  OF  JESUS  377 

formed.  Jesus  and  his  disciples  led  a  simple  life,  holding 
things  in  common.  The  early  church  to  some  extent 
seems  to  have  followed  this  example.  Whether  the  nar- 
rative in  Acts  is  strictly  historical  or  not,  it  reveals  a 
Christian  ideal.  In  the  case  of  such  and  similar  com- 
munistic experiments,  it  is  not  the  outward  form  that  is 
important,  but  the  spirit.  It  matters  little  whether  the 
common  property  of  the  church  in  Jerusalem  was  man- 
aged wisely  by  the  apostles,  how  many  sympathizers 
Ananias  had,  how  far  the  distress  that  Paul's  collections 
sought  to  relieve  was  the  result  of  the  form  of  communism 
practised,  or  to  what  extent  the  example  set  by  the  first 
church  was  followed  by  other  disciples  of  Jesus  in  the 
early  centuries.  It  is  of  profound  significance  that,  under 
the  influence  of  the  spirit  of  Jesus,  some  of  his  followers 
proclaimed  the  great  principle,  "from  each  according  to 
his  capacity,  to  each  according  to  his  need." 

The  deteriorating  effect  upon  the  inner  life  of  man  of  the 
constant  anxiety  for  the  morrow  did  not  escape  the  atten- 
tion of  Jesus.  He  saw  men  shrunk  and  shriveled  by  corrod- 
ing cares,  dwarfed  in  their  development  and  marred  beyond 
the  semblance  of  humanity  by  the  all-subduing,  all-absorb- 
ing thought  of  bread.  He  heard  men  ask,  "What  shall  we 
eat?"  and  "What  shall  we  drink?"  and  "Wherewithal 
shall  we  be  clothed  ? ' '  until  all  other  questions  were  hushed, 
all  other  interests  disappeared.  And  he  understood  that 
the  deepest  cause  of  this  worry  that  kills  is  not  to  be  found 
in  abnormal  social  conditions  but  in  an  abnormal  mental 
attitude.  Men  fail  to  apprehend  the  fact  that  their  liveli- 
hood depends  not  only  on  their  own  exertions,  but  even  more 
on  the  good  will  of  their  fellows  and  the  bounty  of  nature. 
They  fail  to  see  that  just  in  proportion  as  they  seek  the 
kingdom  of  heaven  and  its  righteousness,  the  perfect  order 
of  society  and  its  correct  relations,  their  own  needs  as  indi- 
viduals are  met.  They  lack  confidence.  Nature  is  rich. 
Our  planet  is  stocked  with  all  things  needful  for  the  support 
of  the  human  race,  and  the  gratification  of  its  varied  tastes. 
Jesus  was  impressed  with  this  ample  provision  for  the 


378  THE  PBOPHET  OP  NAZARETH 

humblest  life,  this  beauty  lavished  on  the  most  ephemeral 
creation.  He  reasoned  from  the  less  to  the  greater,  and 
grew  serene.  The  human  race  is  rich.  It  possesses  in  its 
primal  relationships  a  wealth  of  social  sympathy  that  inures 
to  the  benefit  of  every  individual,  and  in  its  collective  enter- 
prises a  potent  means  of  co&ferring  good  upon  all  its  mem- 
bers. Whatever  the  peculiar  forms  of  domestic  life  may  be, 
the  facts  indicated  by  such  terms  as  husband  and  wife, 
father  and  mother,  son  and  daughter,  brother  and  sister, 
suggest  protection,  care  and  sympathy.  Kinship  means 
security.  Gradually,  the  moral  forces  operating  through 
kinship  seek  a  wider  field.  By  covenant  or  conquest  new 
social  organisms  develop,  and  a  new  kinship,  not  based  on 
blood,  but  on  community  of  interests,  and  similarity  of  intel- 
lectual and  moral  life.  This  fraternity  without  blood- 
relationship  secures  even  more  effectively  the  safety  and 
welfare  of  the  individual.  Jesus  reflected  much  upon  the 
significance  of  the  principle  of  brotherliness.  In  view  of 
the  abundant  resources  of  our  home  in  nature  and  of  the 
human  family,  a  child  of  man  may  well  cultivate  an  atti- 
tude of  quiet  confidence,  banishing  worry  and  care  by  broad 
interests,  generous  sympathies,  resolute  activity  and  a  trust- 
ful disposition,  even  though  the  utilization  of  nature's 
forces  and  the  fraternal  organization  of  society  be  as  yet 
very  imperfect.  We  may  hold  in  firmer  grasp  the  present 
aspects  of  the  great  question,  and  may  readily  observe  cer- 
tain limitations  due  to  time  and  circumstance,  but  the  un- 
derlying principles  which  alone  are  of  permanent  im- 
portance were  touched  by  Jesus  in  such  a  masterful  manner 
as  to  challenge  forever  the  attention  and  serious  considera- 
tion of  men. 

The  attitude  of  Jesus  to  the  popular  religious  customs  and 
institutions  of  his  time,  to  sacred  persons,  places,  days  and 
acts,  to  public  prayers,  almsgiving,  and  f  asts;  is  calculated  to 
increase  the  confidence  of  modern  men  in  his  leadership. 
He  claimed  for  all  men  the  rights  accorded  to  a  priestly 
class.  He  seems  to  have  cared  nothing  for  the  continuation 
of  sacrifices,  would  make  the  temple  a  house  of  prayer  for 


THE  LEADERSHIP  OF  JESUS  379 

all  nations,  and  feared  no  evil  for  the  cause  of  religion  from 
its  destruction.  The  evangelist  who  put  upon  his  lips  the 
statement  that  the  time  would  come  when  men  would 
worship  neither  in  Jerusalem  nor  on  Gerizim  but  would 
worship  in  spirit  and  in  truth1  understood  the  mind  of  his 
Master.  He  maintained  that  man  has  a  right  to  determine 
what  to  do  on  the  sabbath,  since  the  sabbath  was  instituted 
for  man's  benefit.  He  neglected  and  criticised  sacred  ablu- 
tions. He  never  ordained  either  baptism  or  eucharist.  He 
disapproved  of  public  prayers,  publicly  announced  or  dis- 
tributed gifts  to  the  poor,  and  public  fasts  or  displays  of 
spiritual  contrition.  He  was  opposed  to  taxation  for  the 
maintenance  of  the  religious  cult,  and  to  the  use  of  force  in 
the  interest  of  religion.  He  criticised  freely  the  scriptures, 
chose  what  seemed  to  him  good,  rejected  what  seemed  to 
him  bad.  He  appealed  directly  to  the  judgment  of  men. 
There  is  nothing  about  him  that  savors  of  the  priest.  It 
is  impossible  to  conceive  of  him  as  smearing  the  horns  of  the 
altar  with  sacred  blood,  or  swinging  a  golden  censer,  or 
chanting  a  litany,  or  elevating  the  host.  In  all  these  re- 
spects he  appeals  very  strongly  to  those  who  seek  to  make 
religion  a  private  affair,  neither  hindered  nor  assisted  by 
the  state,  to  free  the  religious  sentiment  from  its  bondage  to 
formalism  by  relegating  the  modesties  of  the  soul  to  the 
closet,  and  to  insure  the  supremacy  of  the  ethical  element. 
His  position  is  at  once  instructive  and  inspiring.  It  shows 
how  gentleness  and  reverence  may  blend  with  liberty  and 
boldness  to  achieve  the  most  lasting  results. 

That  Jesus  declined  to  assume  the  position  of  a  Messiah, 
a  king  of  Israel,  though  many  ardent  nationalists  appar- 
ently urged  him  to  head  an  insurrection,  some  of  his  most 
intimate  disciples  hoped  that  he  might  appear  in  the  role 
of  a  Son  of  David,  and  not  a  few  pious  souls  longed  and 
prayed  for  a  just  and  God-fearing  native  ruler,  but  pre- 
ferred to  be  known  to  the  world  as  the  Prophet  of  Nazareth, 
as  one  of  the  heralds  of  righteousness  and  truth  his  people 
had  had,  does  not  decrease,  but  increases,  his  glory  in  the 

1  John,  iv,  23. 


380         .  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZAEETH 

eyes  of  thoughtful  men.  Had  he  actually  cherished  a  desire 
to  rule  over  the  Jews,  and  the  other  nations  so  far  as  they 
could  be  conquered,  or  to  come  back  upon  the  clouds  after 
his  death  with  flaming  fire  to  take  vengeance  upon  his 
enemies,1  some  of  his  profoundest  and  most  touching  senti- 
ments would  sound  like  hollow  mockeries.  He  appears  to 
us  a  nobler  man  because  he  resisted  the  temptation.  For 
his  sake  and  for  ours  we  rejoice  that  he  forbade  his  disciples 
to  say  that  he  was  the  Messiah.  When  he  humbly  depre- 
cates the  title  ' '  Good  Master ! ' '  on  the  ground  that  none  is 
good  but  one,  namely,  God,  a  majesty  invests  his  figure  such 
as  no  self-assertion  could  have  lent  it.  There  is  nothing 
monarchical  about  Jesus.  It  is  quite  impossible  to  conceive 
of  him  either  as  a  despot  or  as  a  figure-head,  sitting  on  a 
throne,  with  a  crown  upon  his  brow  and  a  scepter  in  his 
hand.  His  ambition  was,  not  to  rule,  but  to  serve.  It  was 
a  deep-seated  conviction  with  him  and  not  a  well-sounding 
phrase,  that  he  is  great  who  serves,  and  he  is  greatest  who 
serves  the  most.  Even  his  disciples  failed  to  see  his  real 
greatness.  Almost  unwittingly  and  with  the  best  intent, 
they  misinterpreted  some  of  his  most  significant  utterances, 
and  the  early  church  handed  down  his  sayings  in  a  form 
that  left  the  impression  that  Jesus,  far  from  seeking  him- 
self to  realize  the  high  ideal  he  held  up  before  others,  was 
anxious  to  secure  the  honors  of  royalty,  eager  to  obtain 
power  over  the  nations,  jealous  of  his  authority  over  men, 
yea,  even  thirsting  for  vengeance  upon  his  foes.1  Fortu- 
nately, it  is  possible  to  remove  the  later  accretions  and  to 
perceive  the  truth  that  is  better  than  the  best  thought  of 
many  generations. 

This  ideal  of  service,  however,  would  not  be  of  so  great 
a  value,  if  it  were  not  joined  to  a  very  high  conception  of 
human  nature.  The  spirit  of  the  autocrat  was  not  more 
foreign  to  Jesus  than  the  spirit  of  the  slave.  There  was  no 
touch  of  base  obsequiousness  in  him.  His  ministry  was  that 
of  a  free  man.  And  he  did  not  wish  to  see  servility  in 
others.  He  did  not  raise  himself  above  the  level  of  human- 

1  Such  were  the  notions  cherished  by  the  author  of  II  Thess.,  i,  8. 


THE  LEADERSHIP  OF  JESUS  381 

ity  demanding  authority  and  exercising  lordship  over  his 
followers;  he  looked  upon  all  men  as  his  brothers,  and 
wished  to  help  them  to  live  as  sons  of  God,  seeing  the  ele- 
ment of  goodness  and  the  vast  potentialities  in  them.  His 
sense  of  the  worth  of  every  human  personality,  his  tender 
treatment  of  the  bruised  and  wounded  spirit,  his  delicacy 
in  dealing  with  the  tattered  fragments  of  humanity,  his 
reverence  in  the  devastated  shrine,  characterize  the  spirit 
that  is  needed  to  lift  mankind  again. 

At  the  first  view,  Jewish  and  Christian  eschatological 
schemes  no  doubt  have  the  appearance  of  being  utterly  at 
variance  with  the  order  of  ideas  fostered  by  modern  science. 
Sudden  transformation  scenes  are  no  longer  expected. 
Though  we  have  no  absolute  guarantee  that  the  earth  may 
not  perish  at  any  time  by  what  we  are  accustomed  to  call  an 
accident,  there  is  a  strong  and  widespread  confidence  that 
our  planet  will  live  out  its  natural  life  and  that  long  ages 
of  human  history  lie  before  us,  during  which  the  race  will 
gradually  work  out  its  destiny  without  any  cataclysmic 
change  or  catastrophe.  How  far  Jesus  may  have  shared 
the  common  expectations  of  his  time  as  to  the  ushering  in 
of  a  new  age  by  marvelous  changes  in  nature  and  in  human 
society,  is  extremely  difficult  to  determine.  But  the 
prophet's  eyes  are  always  on  the  near  future,  and  there 
is  some  reason  to  believe  that  Jesus  expected  the  kingdom  of 
heaven  to  come  with  power,  the  new  social  order  to  become 
manifest,  in  his  own  life-time.  In  fact  he  seems  to  have 
looked  upon  certain  spiritual  phenomena  as  indicating  not 
only  its  approach  but  its  actual  presence.  On  the  other 
hand,  some  of  his  parables  apparently  show  that  he  did  not 
expect  a  sudden  and  complete  change  of  the  world,  but  a 
gradual  transformation.  After  all,  the  prophet  is  as 
clearly  justified  by  the  course  of  human  events  in  looking 
for  a  sudden  turning  point  in  history,  a  judgment  day  upon 
things  long  undermined  and  ready  to  fall,  a  bursting  forth 
of  unexpected  light,  as  he  is  forced  by  considerations  of 
science  to  assume  that  the  new  will  grow  out  of  the  old,  and 
that  the  hour  of  birth  will  only  reveal  the  life  that  has  been 


THE  PROPHET  OF  NAZARETH 


long  hidden.  From  the  cold  scepticism  that  sees  in  history 
a  meaningless  play  of  social  forces,  questions  the  value  of 
any  social  ideal,  and  doubts  whether  one  course  of  conduct 
should  be  followed  rather  than  another,  men  may  well  turn 
again  to  the  prophet  of  Nazareth  to  rekindle  their  faith  in 
themselves,  in  duty  and  in  destiny. 

A  greater  importance  is  given,  in  the  teaching  of  Jesus, 
to  the  advent  of  the  kingdom  of  heaven,  the  perfecting  of 
human  society,  than  to  the  future  of  the  individual.  This 
is  an  exceedingly  significant  fact.  In  his  judgment,  it  was 
worth  the  while  to  live  and  to  work,  to  suffer  and  to  die,  for 
the  sake  of  the  kingdom  of  heaven.  No  sacrifice,  not  even 
life  itself,  could  be  too  great  to  hasten  the  coming  of  that 
heavenly  society.  He  considered  that  in  losing  his  life  for 
what  he  conceived  of  as  the  highest  good  of  the  human  race, 
a  man  in  reality  gained  his  life.  Jesus  seems  to  have  hoped 
for  himself  and  for  those  who  should  be  accounted  worthy 
of  a  resurrection  from  the  dead  a  conscious,  sexless,  angel- 
like  life  beginning  immediately  after  death.  But  his  al- 
lusions to  the  fate  of  the  individual  are  very  few  and  of 
contested  interpretation.  It  is  perhaps  possible  to  discern 
a  conception  of  man's  destiny  beyond,  developed  at  a  time 
when  Jewish  eschatology  was  still  in  a  fluctuating  state, 
with  a  considerable  degree  of  independence,  but  under  the 
influence  of  surviving  animistic  ideas  and  a  modified  form 
of  the  Persian  doctrine  of  a  resurrection.  On  the  other 
hand,  Jesus  dwells  repeatedly  and  at  length  upon  the  com- 
ing kingdom  of  heaven,  the  social  life  that  was  to  be,  whose 
laws  were  binding  upon  the  sons  of  the  kingdom.  Essen- 
tially this  is  the  temper  of  hosts  of  men  and  women  to-day, 
who  are  willing  to  live  and  strive  and  suffer,  as  suffer  they 
must,  and  die,  if  need  be,  for  the  hope  that  is  in  them  of  a 
better  social  order,  marked  by  greater  justice,  kindness,  in- 
telligence, and  beauty;  who  seek  and  find  life  for  them- 
selves, rich,  glorious  and  satisfying,  in  spending  it  to  bring 
about  the  highest  good  of  all ;  and  who  maintain  a  calm  and 
cheerful  mood  in  the  presence  of  the  mystery  of  death,  per- 
suaded that  whatever  survives,  and  in  whatever  form,  of 


THE  LEADERSHIP  OF  JESUS  383 

physical  force  or  spiritual  energy,  will  continue  to  serve  the 
high  ends  of  existence  to  which  life's  work  was  devoted. 

The  supremacy  of  the  ethical  sense  in  Jesus  is  seen  also 
in  his  peculiar  religious  attitude.  Like  the  great  prophets 
of  his  people  he  seems  to  have  discarded  the  sacrificial  cult, 
and  he  certainly  looked  with  distrust  upon  all  ritualistic 
performances,  while  he  occasionally  expressed  his  thought 
in  spontaneous  acts  of  symbolism.  Unlike  them,  he  never 
seems  to  have  claimed  mantic  inspiration.  None  of  his 
utterances  has  an  oracular  form.  He  did  not  speak  in  the 
name  of  Yahwe;  he  spoke  for  himself.  He  expressed  his 
own  convictions,  and  knew  that  they  came  from  his  own 
mind.  Though  a  mystic,  he  does  not  appear  to  have  been 
subject  to  fits  of  ecstasy  or  similar  psychopathic  conditions. 
He  put  no  emphasis  upon  doctrinal  belief.  He  judged  men 
by  their  deeds  rather  than  by  their  creeds.  He  did  not 
qualify  his  approval  of  the  good  Samaritan  by  lamenting 
his  heresy.  But  he  esteemed  the  righteous  inner  disposition 
higher  than  the  correct  outward  act,  and  regarded  neither 
as  meritorious.  His  God  was  not  a  task-master  driving  his 
slaves  upon  the  earth,  nor  an  employer  of  labor  paying  so 
much  wages  for  so  many  hours  of  work,  nor  a  director  of  a 
penitentiary  punishing  with  so  many  stripes  the  sins  of 
each  culprit,  but  a  father,  just  and  kind,  seeking  by  the  best 
means  the  education  and  welfare  of  his  children.  Specula- 
tions upon  the  nature  of  the  divine  being  seem  to  have  been 
alien  to  his  spirit.  He  would  have  been  utterly  bewildered 
by  the  Nicene  creed.  With  all  his  heart  he  believed  in  the 
Good  Spirit;  but  it  was  the  moral  perfection  of  his  heart's 
ideal  that  attracted  him.  He  longed  to  be  like  unto  The 
Highest.  Such  a  leader  can  only  be  welcomed  by  the  many 
who  have  grown  weary  of  sacramental  magic,  genuflexions 
and  processions,  ablutions  and  libations,  infallible  oracles 
and  infallible  priests,  strange  psychic  experiences  and 
wranglings  over  creeds,  salvation  by  good  deeds  or  orthodox 
professions,  sales  of  indulgences  and  merits  of  the  saints, 
fear  of  an  angry  God,  and  worship  of  an  ignoble  character. 
Such  a  guide  is  greatly  needed  by  the  many  who  have  yet  to 


384  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZAEETH 

learn  that  man  cannot  live  by  bread  alone,  but  that  by  walk- 
ing in  the  path  of  duty,  by  following  the  vision  of  truth,  and 
by  seeking  and  loving  The  Highest  shall  man  live;  that, 
however  the  conventional  standards  may  vary,  our  sense  of 
obligation  points  to  cosmic  laws;  that  failure  of  adjust- 
ment is  responsible  for  the  impression  of  arbitrary  power 
and  irrationality  in  nature,  which  disappears  with  the  grow- 
ing light  and  strength  and  rectitude  of  man ;  that  the  deep- 
est secret  of  the  infinite  life  in  which  we  are  imbedded  can 
never  be  known  to  a  finite  being,  but  that  the  pure  in  heart 
may  approach  it  and,  in  reverent  contemplation,  find  a 
peace  which  passes  understanding. 

Thus  the  thought  of  Jesus  may,  in  numerous  directions, 
become  a  stronger  force  in  the  life  of  the  world  than  it  has 
yet  been.  But  far  more  potent  than  his  word  is  his  wonder- 
ful personality.  It  cannot  be  defined;  names  and  titles 
utterly  fail  to  do  justice  to  it.  Its  subtle  influence  cannot 
be  explained ;  it  can  only  be  felt.  The  hearts  of  men  burn 
within  them,  when  he  talks  with  them  in  the  road.  When 
he  breaks  to  them  the  bread  of  life,  their  eyes  are  opened ; 
and  though  he  vanishes  from  their  sight,  they  can  never  for- 
get him.  To  have  once  come  under  his  spell,  is  to  be  his 
forever.  To  know  him,  is  to  love  him. 

It  is  an  encouraging  sign  of  the  times  that  Israel,  scat- 
tered among  the  nations,  is  beginning  to  appreciate  the 
greatest  of  the  prophets  it  has  given  to  the  human  race. 
Some  degree  of  acquaintance  with  his  life  and  thought 
already  exists  among  other  non-Christian  peoples.  But  it 
is  very  imperfect.  In  Asia  and  Africa  there  are  hundreds 
of  millions  who  have  no  knowledge  of  him.  The  leading 
representatives  of  the  great  missionary  religions  of  the  East, 
Buddhism  and  Islam,  have  as  yet  taken  little  interest  either 
in  studying  the  life  and  teachings  of  Jesus,  or  in  encourag- 
ing their  people  to  do  so.  The  reasons  are  in  part  religious 
and  in  part  political.  They  are  under  the  impression  that 
the  true  interests  of  the  prophets  whom  they  revere  would 
suffer  from  a  wide-spread  knowledge  of  Jesus.  In  this 
they  are  quite  mistaken.  Those  who  have  set  before  men 


THE  LEADEESHIP  OF  JESUS  385 

high  ideals,  raised  their  standards  of  morality,  and  inspired 
to  noble  conduct,  have  labored  in  a  common  cause. 
Gautama  and  Muhammad  and  every  other  prophet  of  the 
soul  will  be  more  truly  honored  and  better  understood  by 
the  nations  to  whom  their  names  are  dear,  when  Jesus  of 
Nazareth  shall  be  known  and  loved  by  them  as  well.  There 
is  more  justification  for  the  feeling  that  the  spread  of  Chris- 
tianity may  be  a  peril  to  their  political  independence  and 
peculiar  organization  of  society.  But  the  exclusion  of  the 
thought  of  Jesus  will  not  obviate  this  danger.  For  it  is  not 
responsible  for  the  martial  spirit  and  the  commercial  greed 
too  characteristic  of  the  so-called  Christian  nations. 
Thoughtful  Brahmins,  Buddhists,  Muhammadans,  and  ad- 
herents of  other  forms  of  religion  in  the  East  should  learn 
to  distinguish  between  the  things  that  Jesus  stood  for  and 
the  things  taught  and  practised  in  his  name,  and  also  to 
make  a  distinction  between  the  messages  of  their  own 
prophets  and  the  beliefs  and  customs  to  which  their  names 
have  been  forced  to  give  sanction.  There  is  much  in  the 
social  life  and  the  political  institutions  of  the  races  living 
outside  the  pale  of  Christendom  which  is  harmful  and 
doomed  to  perish  with  the  advance  of  civilization.  Those 
who  rightly  love  and  cling  to  what  is  noblest  in  their  ances- 
tral faith  should  gratefully  avail  themselves  of  the  added 
strength  and  light  a  knowledge  of  Jesus  would  give  in  the 
common  conflict  against  error  and  wrong.  Christian  mis- 
sionaries are  endeavoring  to  make  Jesus  known  throughout 
the  earth.  So  far  as  they  bring  with  them  his  spirit,  they 
cannot  fail  to  accomplish  their  noble  end.  But  they  fre- 
quently conceive  it  to  be  their  mission  to  wean  the  affections 
of  men  away  from  the  prophets  whom  they  have  loved,  to 
root  up  and  destroy  one  form  of  religious  life  in  order  to 
establish  another  form.  This  is  a  grievous  error.  A  mis- 
sionary should  be  careful  first  to  take  out  the  beam  of  for- 
malism that  is  in  his  own  eye  in  order  to  be  better  fitted  to 
take  out  the  mote  that  is  in  his  brother's  eye. 

The  contact  between  different  races,  nations  and  classes 
of  men  grows  closer  every  day.     Elements  of  civilization, 
25 


386  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZAEETH 

creating  a  community  of  interests,  are  constantly  diffused. 
Isolation  becomes  increasingly  difficult.  Strong  moral  and 
intellectual  forces  at  work  anywhere  in  the  world  quickly 
become  operative  over  wide  areas.  Large  bodies  of  men  are 
bending  their  efforts,  consciously  and  determinedly,  to  the 
realization  of  social  ideals  that  seem  to  them  desirable.  The 
currents  of  human  life  point  to  changes,  political  and 
economic,  social  and  religious,  compared  with  which  the 
revolutions  of  the  past  will  seem  insignificant.  Prophets 
are  heard  announcing,  in  strident  tones,  the  judgment  that 
will  come  upon  a  world  where  are  the  slayers  and  the  slain, 
the  oppressors  and  their  victims,  the  impostors  and  their 
dupes,  the  self-indulgent  and  the  needy.  There  are  also 
seers  who  proclaim  visions  of  good  things  to  come,  corn  and 
oil  and  wine,  short  hours  of  labor,  rich  amusements,  pleas- 
ant homes,  long  life  and  numerous  offspring.  Both  classes 
are  needed.  But  in  the  ages  that  lie  before  us  men  will 
learn  to  listen,  with  a  deeper  gratification,  to  the  great 
prophet  of  Nazareth  who,  in  the  fullness  of  time,  went  forth 
to  proclaim  as  good  news  the  coming  of  the  kingdom  of 
heaven  to  earth  as  a  reign  of  righteousness,  mercy  and  truth. 


EXCURSUS  A 

GNOSTICISM 

The  importance  of  this  great  movement  was  first  appre- 
ciated by  Gottfried  Arnold  whose  Kirchen-  und  Ketzer- 
geschichte  (1699-1700)  treated  the  Gnostics  with  unprece- 
dented sympathy  and  fairness.  Massuet,  in  his  edition  of 
Irenaeus  (1710),  abandoned  at  least  the  patristic  explana- 
tion of  Gnostic  heresy  as  due  to  moral  depravity  and  hostil- 
ity to  the  Christian  religion,  though  he  characterized  the 
Gnostics  as  "fanatics."  Mosheim  also  spoke  of  them  as 
"fanatics/'  but  earnestly  endeavored  to  understand  their 
thought  as  an  expression  of  Oriental  philosophy  (Kezer- 
geschichte,  1748).  Semler  significantly  compared  them 
with  theosophists  like  Boehme  and  Dippel  (Einleitung  zu 
Baumgarten's  Untersuchungen,  1771,  p.  119).  Neander,  in 
his  Genetische  Entwicklung  der  vornehmsten  gnostischen 
Systeme,  (1818),  traced  Gnosticism  to  Philo,  while  Lewald 
(De  doctrina  gnostica,  1818),  looked  for  Zoroastrian  influ- 
ences. A  most  important  contribution  to  the  study  of  Gnos- 
ticism was  Baur's  Die  christliche  Gnosis,  (1835).  Our 
knowledge  of  one  important  source  was  advanced  by  the  re- 
searches of  Bunsen  (Hippolytus  and  his  age,  1852),  Volk- 
mar  (Hippolytus  und  die  romischen  Zeitgenossen,  1855), 
and  Lipsius  (Der  Gnosticismus  in  Ersch  und  Grubers  En- 
cyklopedie,  1860).  Heinrici  undertook  a  careful  study  of 
the  Valentinian  system  (Die  Valentinianische  Gnosis, 
1871).  Hilgenfeld  presented,  in  his  Ketzergeschichte  des 
Urchristentums,  (1884),  what  is  known  from  patristic  ac- 
counts in  an  admirable  manner.  New  light  has  been  thrown 
by  the  discovery  of  some  of  their  own  writings,  notably  the 
Pistis  Sophia,  translated  into  English  by  Mead  (1898),  the 
Books  of  Je'u  published  by  Carl  Schmidt  in  Texte  und  Un- 

387 


388  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZAEETH 

tersuchungen,  VIII,  and  other  works  preserved  in  the 
Coptic,  and  a  collection  of  Gnostic  hymns  in  the  Syriac. 
Harnack,  in  his  Dogmengeschichte  (1886-1890)  and  Chro- 
nologie  der  altchristlichen  Literatur  (1897),  bases  his  ap- 
preciation upon  these  as  well  as  upon  the  patristic  testi- 
mony. 

Friedlander  has  sought  to  establish  a  Jewish  origin  for 
Gnosticism  (Der  vorchristliche  judische  Gnosticismus, 
1898)  and  has  rendered  it  probable  that  the  Ophites  and 
other  sects  had  a  pre-Christian  origin;  but  his  attempt  to 
prove  that  the  Talmudic  Minim  are  Gnostics  rather  than 
Christians  and  that  the  gilyonim  are  diagrams  like  the  one 
described  by  Celsus  rather  than  "gospels"  must  be  regarded 
as  a  failure.  While  the  contention  of  the  Tubingen  school 
that  the  apostle  Paul  was  caricatured  by  Jewish  Christians 
under  the  masque  of  Simon  Magus  still  holds  true,  there  is 
at  present  a  tendency  to  assume  that  Simon  actually  existed 
and  exercised  an  influence  in  shaping  the  Gnostic  move- 
ment. The  philosopher  Kreyenbiihl,  who  looks  to  Gnos- 
ticism for  the  salvation  of  the  modern  world,  regards  the 
Apophasis  Megale,  or  Great  Revelation,  found  in  the  Philo- 
sophumena  of  Hippolytus,  as  a  genuine  work  of  Simon,  and 
the  Fourth  Gospel  as  a  work  of  his  disciple  Menander  of 
Kapparetaea  (Das  Evangelium  nach  der  Wahrheit,  1900). 
Either  assumption  seems  to  be  untenable.  But  the  sym- 
pathetic study  of  Gnosticism  by  this  thinker  cannot  fail  to 
be  productive  of  good  results.  Delff,  in  his  GescliiMe  des 
Rabbi  Jesu  von  Nazara  (1889),  assuming  a  large  part  of  the 
Fourth  Gospel  to  come  from  an  eye-witness,  the  presbyter 
John,  maintained  that  Jesus  himself  was  a  Gnostic.  Honig 
(Die  Ophiten,  1889)  called  attention  to  some  indications  of 
Jewish  Gnosticism  likely  to  be  older  than  the  appearance 
of  the  Ophites  as  a  Christian  sect. 

W.  Anz  made  an  important  contribution  to  the  study  of 
Gnosticism  (Zur  Frage  nach  dem  Ur sprung  des  Gnosticis- 
mus, 1897 ) ,  by  pursuing  the  central  idea  of  the  ascent  of 
the  soul  and  the  important  cultic  performance  of  baptism 
back  to  Babylonian  conceptions  and  practices.  He  was 


EXCUESUS  A 


aided  by  the  publication  in  recent  times  of  numerous  re- 
ligious texts  from  different  periods  of  Babylonian  history 
and  especially  by  Brandt's  translations  of  Mandaic  texts. 
The  Mandaeans  are  the  only  known  pagan  Gnostic  sect,  but 
it  is  no  easy  task  to  separate  the  early  stratum  in  the  Genza 
and  the  Qolasta,  not  yet  affected  by  a  superficial  knowledge 
of  Judaism  and  Christianity,  from  the  later  parts.  There 
is  no  doubt  that  Anz  is  right  in  assuming  a  dominant  influ- 
ence of  Babylonian  speculation  in  the  formation  of 
Gnosticism.  He  admits  an  additional  Persian  element. 
But  the  close  relations  between  India  and  Bactria  must  not 
be  overlooked.  With  a  strong  missionary  religion  then 
flourishing  in  India,  its  influence  upon  the  types  of  religious 
thought  in  the  Parthian  empire  cannot  be  questioned. 

Grill  has  forcibly  argued  that  Indian  thought  had  much 
to  do  with  the  origin  of  Gnosticism  (Entsfehung  des  vierten 
Evangeliums,  1901).  It  is  evident  that  the  great  Gnostic 
systems  of  the  second  century  were  the  products  of  ideas 
and  tendencies  of  thought,  of  different  provenience  and  age, 
existing  in  the  Hellenistic  world  before  it  came  in  contact 
with  Christianity ;  but  the  historian  is  not  justified  in  assum- 
ing the  existence  of  a  Valentinian  system  before  Valen- 
tinus  or  in  overlooking  the  later  coloring  given  to  the 
thought  of  great  teachers  by  their  disciples  and  the  distor- 
tion of  their  statements  in  the  reports  of  their  enemies. 


EXCURSUS  B 

THE  COLLEGIA  VICENTINA 

Wiszowazzi,  a  grandson  of  Fausto  Sozzini,  relates  in  his 
Narratio  compendiosa,  written  before  1678  and  published 
as  an  appendix  to  Sand's  Bibliotheca  antitrinitariorum 
(1684),  that  about  the  year  1546  religious  meetings  were 
held  in  Vicenza,  near  Venice,  attended  by  circa  forty  mem- 
bers, at  which  the  doctrine  of  the  Trinity  was  questioned. 
Among  the  participants  he  mentions  Lelio  Sozzini,  Giulio 
(Gherlandi)  of  Treviso,  and  Francesco  (Segga)  of  Rovigo. 
Sand  himself,  who  may  have  had  access  to  further  sources 
or  made  larger  excerpts  from  the  Biography  of  Lelio,  men- 
tions, besides  these  three,  Bernardino  Ochino,  Nicolao  Pa- 
ruta,  Valentino  Gentile,  Francesco  Negri,  Paolo  Alziati, 
and  others.  Lubieniecky,  in  his  Historia  reformationis 
Polonicae,  1685,  pp  38  ff.,  tells  substantially  the  same  story. 
While  maintaining  that  this  family  tradition  contains  a  his- 
toric nucleus,  Treschel  (Die  protestantischen  Antitrini- 
tarier,  1844,  II,  391  ff.)  thought  that  the  questions  said  to 
have  been  discussed  at  Vicenza  had  not  at  that  time  been 
raised,  but  represented  later  "Socinian"  speculation. 

The  discovery  of  the  document  of  the  Inquisition  in  Ven- 
ice (see  pp.  19,  137)  puts  these  famous  Collegia  Vicentina 
in  an  entirely  new  light.  It  is  seen  that  numerous  Baptist 
churches  in  Italy  and  Switzerland  cherished  views  concern- 
ing the  person  of  Jesus  far  more  radical  than  those  held  by 
the  later  Socinians.  Well  known  reformers,  like  Curione, 
Negri  and  Camillo,  not  hitherto  suspected  of  being  Baptists, 
are  found  to  have  been  members  of  these  churches.  Discus- 
sions of  precisely  the  kind  intimated  by  Wiszowazzi  had  ap- 
parently gone  on  for  some  time  in  the  Baptist  churches  of 
Italy,  when  the  Council  was  held.  The  prevailing  type  of 

390 


EXCURSUS  B  391 


doctrine  was  that  of  the  churches  in  Switzerland  which  had 
adopted  Denck's  position,  while  the  influence  of  Servetus 
was  less  marked.  And  some  of  the  participants  in  the 
Vicentine  gatherings  appear  again  four  years  later  at  the 
Council  of  Vicenza.  There  is  no  reason  to  doubt  that  there 
was  a  Baptist  church  at  Vicenza  in  1546,  or  that  it  was  oc- 
cupied then  with  questions  concerning  the  person  of  Jesus. 
The  only  serious  difficulty  about  Wiszowazzi  's  account  is  the 
presence  of  Ochino.  We  know  that  he  was  appointed 
preacher  to  the  Italians  in  Augsburg  in  December,  1545, 
and  that  he  escaped  from  the  city  during  the  siege  in  Janu- 
ary, 1547.  Unless  it  be  supposed  that  he  went  to  Ferrara 
and  Venice  in  1546,  which  is  not  wholly  impossible,  was  in- 
vited by  his  friends  to  the  meetings  of  the  Baptists,  and  re- 
turned again  to  Augsburg,  his  presence  must  be  seriously 
doubted.  It  is  also  noticeable  that  in  his  published  works 
he  never  can  be  said  to  question  the  Trinity,  though  he  is 
persistently  charged  with  anti-trinitarian  views.  Yet  his 
last  defense  of  the  orthodox  doctrine  is  weaker  than  one 
would  expect  from  a  man  of  his  ability,  when  speaking  his 
mind  freely  and  setting  forth  deep-seated  convictions. 
Concerning  Lelio  Sozzini  himself,  we  know  that  he  was  in 
Venice  in  1546. 


EXCURSUS  C 

THE  EESUEEECTION 

The  later  narratives  (Luke  xxiv,  John  xx,  Mark  xvi,  9-20) 
describe  appearances  of  Jesus  after  death  to  his  eleven 
disciples  in  Jerusalem.  An  earlier  tradition  knows  of  no 
such  appearances  in  that  city.  According  to  Matth.  xxviii, 
16-20  it  was  in  Galilee  he  was  first  seen  by  his  disciples. 
Mark's  account  is  a  torso.  But  the  angel  announces  that 
Jesus  will  appear  to  his  disciples  and  Peter  in  Galilee.  In 
the  Gospel  of  Peter  58  ff.  the  appearance  can  occur  nowhere 
else  than  in  Galilee,  though  the  text  breaks  off  before  it  is 
described.  That  the  authors  of  Matthew  and  Mark  should 
have  passed  by  these  appearances  to  the  disciples  in  Jeru- 
salem on  the  third  day  as  unworthy  of  record,  if  they  had 
ever  heard  of  them,  is  quite  inconceivable.  Luke's  account 
of  the  two  disciples  of  Emmaus  and  his  casual  allusion  to  an 
appearance  to  Simon  are  not  supported  by  John,  while  his 
description  of  the  appearance  of  Jesus  to  "the  eleven  and 
those  who  were  with  them, ' '  his  leading  them  out  to  Bethany 
and  his  ascension  to  heaven  from  that  place  on  the  third 
day  differs  widely  from  John 's  narrative  of  the  appearances 
of  Jesus  first  to  all  the  disciples  except  Thomas  but  to  no 
other  persons  with  them,  on  the  third  day  after  his  death, 
and  then,  one  week  later,  to  all  the  disciples  including 
Thomas.  While  our  two  earliest  gospels  reveal  no  knowl- 
edge of  any  such  experiences  on  the  part  of  the  disciples 
in  Jerusalem,  Luke  makes  no  mention  of  any  appearances  of 
Jesus  in  Galilee,  either  on  a  mountain  (as  Matth.  xxviii,  16) 
or  at  the  sea  (as  Peter  60  and  the  appendix  to  the  Fourth 
Gospel,  John  xxi,  1  ff . )  Luke 's  attitude  can  be  readily  ac- 
counted for,  as  the  earlier  appearances  in  Jerusalem  must 
have  seemed  to  him  far  more  important  than  the  later  one 

392 


EXCURSUS  C  393 


in  Galilee.  The  same  is  probably  true  of  the  author  of  the 
longer  appendix  to  Mark.  The  editor  of  the  Fourth  Gospel 
felt  that  for  completeness  sake  this  should  be  added,  espe- 
cially as  his  version  gave  an  opportunity  of  presenting  the 
relative  importance  of  Peter  and  John.  Hence  the  addition 
of  xxi,  1-23. 

Already  Matthew  and  Mark  are  familiar  with  the  tradi- 
tion that  some  women  had  found  the  tomb  of  Jesus  empty 
and  had  been  told  by  angels  to  inform  his  disciples  that  he 
would  go  before  them  into  Galilee.  The  women,  the  angels, 
and  the  empty  sepulchre  appear  also  in  the  later  gospels, 
but  the  appointment  of  a  meeting  in  Galilee  has  disap- 
peared. Characteristic  of  the  freedom  with  which  the 
earlier  accounts  were  treated  by  later  writers  is  the  change 
of  Matthew :  ' '  Tell  his  disciples  ....  he  goes  before  you 
into  Galilee"  (xxviii,  7)  into  Luke's  " Remember  he  spoke 
to  you  when  he  was  yet  in  Galilee "  (xxiv,  6).  Concern- 
ing the  events  at  the  tomb  there  is  the  most  bewildering  dif- 
ference of  statements.  There  is  no  agreement  as  to  who 
the  women  were  (Mary  Magdalene,  Mary  Magdalene  and 
another  Mary,  the  two  Marys  and  Salome,  or  the  two  Marys 
and  Joanna) ;  and  whether  they  were  alone  or  accompanied 
by  Peter  and  John  on  a  second  visit ;  when  they  started  out 
(on  Saturday  night  or  Sunday  morning) ;  why  they  went 
(to  view  the  sepulchre  or  to  anoint  Jesus  with  spices)  ; 
whether  the  tomb  had  a  military  guard  or  not ;  whether  one 
angel  or  two  appeared ;  whether  the  angel  sat  on  the  stone 
outside  or  sat  within  the  tomb;  what  the  angel  or  angels 
said ;  whether  or  not  Jesus  himself  appeared  to  the  women ; 
and  whether  or  not  the  women  reported  what  they  had  seen. 
No  careful  historian  would  feel  justified  in  drawing  from 
these  confused,  contradictory  and  mutually  exclusive  stories 
the  inference  that  a  tomb  closed  with  a  heavy  stone  into 
which  Jesus  had  been  laid  was  by  some  women  found  to  be 
empty  on  the  third  day.  Schmiedel,  in  his  admirable  dis- 
cussion of  the  Resurrection  and  Ascension  Narratives  in  En- 
cyclopaedia Biblica,  goes  so  far  as  to  see  in  Mark's  state- 
ment *  *  they  said  nothing  to  any  one ' '  an  admission  that  the 


394  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZARETH 

story  of  the  empty  sepulchre  was  a  novelty  first  introduced 
by  himself.  But  the  bearing  of  this  phrase  depends  upon 
what  followed  it  in  the  original  Mark.  It  is  difficult  to  be- 
lieve that  the  author  who  recorded  a  solemn  injunction  to 
the  women  by  an  angel  to  deliver  a  most  important  message 
from  the  risen  Master  should  have  wished  to  leave  the  im- 
pression that  they  not  only  failed  immediately  to  carry  the 
good  news  to  the  disciples  but  never  communicated  their 
marvelous  experience  until  he  came  into  possession  of  the 
facts  and  proclaimed  them.  Harnack  (Bruchstuecke  des 
Evangeliums  des  Petrus,  1893,  p.  33)  thinks  that  Peter 
58-60  was  taken  from  the  original  ending  of  Mark,  and  in 
this  he  may  be  right.  But  the  women  are  not  instructed  in 
the  Gospel  of  Peter  to  give  any  message  to  the  disciples. 
1  'And  they  said  nothing  to  any  one,  for  they  were  afraid" 
is  probably  an  editorial  gloss,  introduced  after  the  present 
close  of  the  gospel  (vss  9-20)  had  been  added,  having  for 
its  purpose  to  explain  why  the  disciples  did  not  go  to  Gali- 
lee but  remained  in  Jerusalem  to  see  their  risen  Lord  there. 
Matth.  xxviii  undoubtedly  contains  much  late  material. 
The  last  verses  have  clearly  been  worked  over,  MSS.  used 
in  the  fourth  century  still  containing  a  simpler,  non-trini- 
tarian  form  of  the  baptismal  formula;  vss  9  and  10  are 
generally  recognized  as  late  interpolations;  vss  11-15  are 
probably  also  later  than  1-8,  16,  and  vs  17  has  the  appear- 
ance of  being  secondary.  In  some  respects  Matth.  xxviii, 
1-8  seems  more  original  than  Mark  xvi,  1-8.  There  is  a 
distinct  advance  from  the  more  natural  visit  to  see  the  tomb 
on  Saturday  night  immediately  after  the  Sabbath  had  ended 
to  the  visit  on  the  following  morning  with  spices  to  anoint 
the  body  of  Jesus ;  the  number  of  women  is  increased  in 
Mark;  the  coming  of  an  angel  to  roll  away  the  heavy  stone 
and  seating  himself  upon  it  is  far  more  natural  than  his 
sitting  within  the  tomb  and  being  discovered  there;  "the 
Nazarene"  is  added  in  Mark;  Peter  is  mentioned  in  addi- 
tion to  the  other  disciples  in  Mark ;  to  avoid  repetition  Mark 
omits  in  vs  7  an  essential  part  of  the  message  "he  is  risen 
from  the  dead;"  Mark  changes  "Behold,  I  have  told  you" 


EXCURSUS  C  395 


into  "as  he  said  to  you."  On  the  other  hand,  Matth. 
xxviii,  4  is  occasioned  by  the  story  of  the  watch  which  ap- 
pears to  be  a  late  insertion.  Unfortunately,  we  have  no 
means  of  knowing  whether  the  original  Aramaic  gospel  con- 
tained the  story  of  the  empty  sepulchre. 

As  for  the  fulfilment  of  the  angel's  promise  that  Jesus 
should  show  himself  to  his  disciples  in  Galilee,  Matthew  de- 
scribes an  appearance  which  took  place  on  a  mountain  there, 
the  eleven  disciples  seeing  him  and  worshiping,  though 
some  doubted,  while  the  appendix  to  John  relates  how  Jesus 
showed  himself  to  seven  disciples  at  the  Sea  of  Tiberias,  and 
the  Gospel  of  Peter  likewise  sets  out  to  record  an  appearance 
at  the  sea,  though  Andrew  and  Levi  who  are  especially  men- 
tioned in  Peter  are  not  referred  to  in  John  xxi.  Here  again 
there  is  an  advance  from  "the  eleven  disciples "  in  Matth. 
to  the  emphasis  upon  Peter  in  John  xxi  and  Peter  60,  pos- 
sibly also  from  the  apparition  before  whom  the  disciples 
prostrate  themselves  in  Matth.  to  the  Lord  who  eats  bread 
and  fish  with  his  '  *  little  children ' '  in  John  xxi. 

It  is  doubtful  whether  critical  students  would  have  been 
inclined  to  assume  a  kernel  of  historic  truth  in  Matth. 
xxviii,  16  ff.  if  it  had  not  been  for  I  Cor.  xv,  3-8.  The  ac- 
count given  in  this  passage  differs  from  all  others  especially 
in  two  respects :  it  seems  to  assume  that  the  appearances  of 
Jesus  to  his  immediate  disciples  were  of  the  same  character 
of  celestial  visions  as  those  of  Paul  and  it  gives  an  enumer- 
ation of  such  visions  apparently  intended  to  be  exhaustive 
which  by  its  exclusions,  inclusions  and  order  distinguishes 
it  in  a  marked  degree  from  the  gospels.  Jesus  is  said  to 
have  appeared  first  to  Cephas,  then  to  the  twelve,  then  to 
five  hundred  brethren  at  once,  then  to  James,  then  to  all  the 
apostles,  and  finally  to  Paul  as  to  one  born  too  early.  That 
the  last  phrase,  wholly  inapplicable  in  its  ordinary  sense, 
can  only  be  explained  by  a  reference  to  its  meaning  in  the 
Valentinian  system  of  Gnostic  thought,  was  first  seen  by 
Straatman  (Kritische  Studien,  II,  196  ff.)  who  was  led  to 
reject  the  whole  passage  as  spurious.  Brandt  (Evangelische 
Geschichte,  1893,  p.  4146°.)  recognizes  the  correctness  of 


396  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZAEETH 

Straatman's  observation  on  the  meaning  of  ektroma,  but 
deems  it  sufficient  to  regard  this  word  as  a  later  gloss,  and 
to  assume  that  vss.  3-7  constitute  an  earlier  account  quoted 
by  Paul.  Schmiedel  (L  c.)  thinks  that  Paul  received  this 
information  when  he  visited  Jerusalem  three  years  after  his 
conversion.  Either  assumption  is  exposed  to  grave  diffi- 
culties. If  already  within  a  decade  or  two  after  the  death 
of  Jesus  a  tradition  concerning  the  number  and  order  of 
his  post-mortem  appearances  had  fixed  itself  so  firmly  in 
apostolic  circles  in  Jerusalem  as  to  take  the  shape  of  a  creed 
preached  and  believed,  it  is  not  easy  to  account  for  the  de- 
velopment of  our  greatly  divergent  gospel  narratives.  The 
elements  of  faith  that  are  allowed  to  drop  are  as  remarkable 
as  the  elements  added.  An  appearance  of  Jesus  to  five  hun- 
dred brethren  is  permitted  to  vanish  completely ;  an  appear- 
ance to  James,  the  brother  of  Jesus,  disappears  everywhere 
except  in  the  Gospel  of  the  Hebrews  where  it  occurs  in  a 
highly  legendary  form  at  least  in  the  days  of  Jerome;  an 
appearance  to  the  twelve  which,  if  the  text  is  sound,  would 
include  Matthias  who  was  elected  to  take  the  place  of  Judas 
is  passed  by ;  an  appearance  to  all  the  apostles,  by  which  in 
distinction  from  the  twelve  a  larger  circle  of  missionaries  is 
likely  to  be  intended,  is  likewise  eliminated,  even  the  ap- 
pearance to  Peter  is  no  longer  deemed  worthy  of  more  than 
a  passing  allusion.  Of  even  greater  importance  than  this 
abandonment  of  testimony  to  the  appearances  of  Jesus  him^ 
self  is  the  change  of  emphasis.  The  gospels  put  the  most 
stress  upon  the  appearance  of  angels  at  the  empty  tomb 
announcing  the  resurrection,  and  from  this  starting-point 
go  on  to  narrate  the  manifestations  of  the  Master  who  has 
come  out  of  the  tomb  with  flesh  and  bones,  increasing  their 
emphasis  and  wealth  of  details  as  they  are  further  removed 
from  the  time  of  Jesus.  Is  it  probable  that  Matthew  should 
have  deliberately  slighted  the  tradition  current  in  the 
mother-church,  stamped  with  the  authority  of  the  apostles, 
and  handed  over  from  Jerusalem  to  the  Gentile  churches, 
and  instead  of  this  taken  his  stand  upon  the  report  of  some 
women  that  they  had  seen  an  angel  and  found  the  tomb 


EXCURSUS  C  397 


empty?  And  is  it  likely  that  no  subsequent  evangelist 
should  have  come  upon  this  tradition  or  deemed  it  worthy 
of  serious  attention  ?  Can  it  be  supposed  that  authors  who 
set  such  store  by  the  visions  of  angels  actually  were  preju- 
diced against  "mere  visions"  of  the  risen  Messiah?  These 
questions  become  especially  pertinent,  if  it  is  assumed  that 
an  epistle  containing  this  original  apostolic  tradition  had 
for  half  a  century  or  more  been  in  circulation  among  those 
for  whom  the  gospels  were  written.  That  every  evangelist 
should  have  "happened"  to  overlook  one  of  the  earliest 
Christian  classics,  is  a  somewhat  hazardous  supposition. 
The  more  closely  the  account  in  I  Cor.  xv,  3-8  is  examined, 
the  more  clearly  its  peculiar  features  point  to  a  compara- 
tively late  date,  when  "the  twelve  disciples"  were  the  ob- 
ject of  much  reverence,  the  term  "apostles"  designated  a 
larger  body,  as  in  the  Didache,  facts  gleaned  from  different 
sources  were  joined  together  into  brief  creedal  statements, 
the  tendency  to  extend  over  a  long  period  the  appearances 
of  Jesus  was  marked,  and  at  least  in  some  circles  the  ac- 
counts of  such  appearances  were  interpreted  as  referring 
to  visions  of  a  heavenly  figure,  in  harmony  with  a  peculiar 
view  of  the  character  of  the  celestial  body  possessed  by  those 
who  are  brought  from  death  into  eternal  life. 

When  the  character  of  this  passage  is  scrutinized,  the 
theory  that  the  belief  in  the  resurrection  of  Jesus  originated 
in  visions  loses  its  strongest  support.  While  it  is  by  no 
means  improbable  that  the  nervous  tension  caused  by  the 
daily  expectation  of  his  return  as  the  Messiah  here  and  there 
led  to  genuine  ecstatic  experiences  in  which  his  face  was  seen 
and  his  voice  was  heard,  the  documentary  evidence  of  such 
visions  is  not  sufficient.  Nor  could  such  visions  have  pro- 
duced the  conviction  that  he  had  risen  from  the  dead  on  the 
third  day.  That  conviction  was  engendered  by  faith  in  the 
prophetic  word  and  in  its  application  to  Jesus.  It  was 
probably  in  Galilee  that  the  disciples  began  to  proclaim 
their  earnest  conviction  that  Jesus  had  risen  from  the  dead 
according  to  the  Scriptures  and  would  soon  return  to  them. 
The  expectation  of  such  a  return  of  a  dead  ruler  or  teacher 


398  THE  PEOPHET  OF  NAZAEETH 

is  not  an  uncommon  phenomenon  in  history.  With  dread 
or  hope  the  people  looks  for  a  Nero,  Charlemagne,  or  Bar- 
barossa  to  come  back  from  long,  mysterious  concealment. 
The  expected  reappearance  of  some  dead  Imam  or  Mahdi 
is  a  constant  source  of  anxiety  to  the  Muhammadan  author- 
ities. If  in  some  such  instances  the  belief  has  been  that  the 
heroes  in  reality  never  died,  a  quite  miraculous  preservation 
is  always  assumed,  and  at  bottom  the  early  belief  in  the 
case  of  Jesus  was  not  very  different.  God  would  not  allow 
his  holy  one  to  see  corruption,  or  hand  his  soul  over  to 
Sheol.  Before  the  soul  had  finally  left  the  body,  reanima- 
tion  had  taken  place,  and  the  suspended  life  was  miracu- 
lously continued.  As  long  as  the  place  where  they  had  lain 
him  was  unknown,  there  was  no  motive  for  further  specula- 
tion about  his  resting-place.  He  was  not  there,  he  was  risen. 
But  when  a  fulfilment  was  sought  for  the  prophecy  in  Isa. 
liii,  9  that  the  Servant  of  Yahwe  should  "have  his  tomb 
with  the  wicked  and  be  with  the  rich  in  his  death, ' '  interest 
in  his  tomb  would  naturally  develop.  When  the  desire  to 
know  what  had  happened  at  this  tomb  had  once  awakened, 
the  growth  of  legend  could  not  be  stopped.  And  this  is 
likely  to  have  occurred  at  an  early  date.  At  first  the  assur- 
ance of  an  angel  on  the  third  day  that  he  had  risen  and 
would  be  seen  in  Galilee  sufficed.  Then  faith  demanded 
that  he  should  have  been  seen  on  that  very  day  in  the  vicin- 
ity of  the  tomb.  Gradually  the  thought  seems  to  have 
grown  familiar  that  during  a  longer  period  he  had  often 
come  back  to  convince  and  instruct  his  disciples  for  their 
world-mission,  while  the  outward  form  of  his  appearing 
would  naturally  be  conceived  in  harmony  with  the  more  ma- 
terialistic or  more  spiritual  idea  entertained  of  the  resur- 
rection body.  But  as  the  ultimate  cause  of  this  entire 
development  was  the  ineradicable  impression  of  the  person- 
ality of  Jesus,  so  each  step  reveals  something  of  the  grow- 
ing sense  of  his  worth  and  attachment  to  his  cause. 


INDEX 


I.  INDEX  OF  SUBJECTS 


Abba!   33,  153,  154,  361. 
Abel's  sacrifice,  54,  58. 
Adam,  39,  57. 
Ablutions,  60,  275,  379. 
Abraham,  numen  of  Hebron,  40, 
54,  57. 

his  sacrifice,  54,  59. 

his  seed,  37,  40,  41. 
Acts  of  the  Apostles,  185-187. 

of  John,  170-185. 

of  Paul  and  Thecla,  185. 

of  Peter,  170. 
Adapa,   119. 
Adoptionism,  136. 
Advent,  second, 

of  dead  prophets,  46. 

of  translated  heroes,  83. 

of  Jesus,  321. 
Akiba,  Eabbi,  89. 
Albigenses,  136. 
Allegorical  method,  7,  12. 
Alexander  the  Great,  245,  249. 
Alexander  Balas,  76. 
Alexander  Jannaeus,  66. 
Alziati,  Paolo,  137,  390. 
Alogi,  160,  207. 
'  A  nani '  ' l  the  Man  on  the  Clouds ' ' 

130. 

Angel  of  the  Covenant,  54,  63. 
Angels,  degraded  gods,  63. 
Animal  sacrifices,  59. 
Anointing  of  kings,  71. 
Antiochus  Epiphanes,  55,  63,  75. 
Antichrist,  64. 
Antitype,  36. 


Apophasis  Megale,  388. 
Aramaic   Gospel,   205,   218,   219, 

220,  223,  228,  230,  231,  232. 
Aramaic  Targums,  3,  90,  91,  166, 

167,  229. 
Aramati,  45,   67. 
Arianism,  16. 
Aristobulus  I.,  73. 
Aristobulus  II.,  71. 
Ark  of  the  Covenant,  60. 
Arminianism,  22. 
Arnauld,  Antoine,  333. 
Astrological  view  of  the  world,  65, 

243  ff. 

Assumption  of  Moses,  82. 
Avatars,  213. 

Babylonian  mythology,  118. 

Balaam's  curse,  37,  41. 

Balder,  17. 

Banus,  86,  256. 

Baptism,  53,  56,  60,  222,  257,  259, 

261,  313,  316,  379. 
Baptists,  19,  22,  136  ff,  160,  207, 

326,  329,  331,  390,  391. 
Barbarossa,  398. 
Bar  Elaha,  145. 
Barnabas,  187,  200. 
Bar   'nasha,  107,  111*,  112,  114, 

115,  117,  120,  127,  128,  129, 

130,  131,  133. 
Bar  nefele,  130. 

Baruch,  Apocalypse  of,  83,  184. 
Basilides,  15,  211. 
Bathsheba,  68. 


399 


400 


INDEX 


Bau,  82. 

Begotten  'God'  or  'Son/  13,  14 

Bene  Elohim,  142,  143. 

Ben-Sotada,  250,  251. 

Bereh-de-gabra,  127,  128,  130. 

Bereh  de-  'nasha,  127,  128. 

Bereh  de-bar  'nasha,  127,  128. 

Beth  Ephrathah,  38,  46. 

Bethsaida,  266. 

Bhagavadgita,  347. 

Bogh,  Slavonic  divinity,  17. 

Biandrata,  Giorgio,  137. 

Boethusians,  182. 

Brethren  of  the  Free  Spirit,  136. 

Brethren  of  the  United  Life,  136. 

Buddhism,  384,  385. 

Bythos,  170. 

Caiaphas,  286,  287. 

Cain-Kenites,  58. 

Calvin,  estimate  of,  328,  329. 

Camillo  Eenato,  390. 

Canaan,  curse  of,  37. 

Canticles,  character  of,  38,  45. 

Capernaum,   263,   267,   268,   270, 

276,  278. 

Catholic  Epistles,   191-193. 
Cerinthus,  160,  247,  250. 
Chaamu- Venus,  83. 
Chalazath- Venus,  83. 
Charlemagne,  398. 
Chorazin,  266. 
Chrestus,  178. 
Christ-conception,  3,  4,  7-9. 
Christian  experience,  5. 
Christo-centric  theology,  27. 
Christus,  174,  177,  178. 
Christiani,  177,  178. 
Ciasca's  Diatessaron,  208. 
Circumcision,  55,  56. 
Cities  of  refuge,  61. 
Claude  of  Savoy,  137 
Clementine  Epistles,  187,  188. 
Collegia  Vicentina,  390,  391. 
Conjunctio  maxima,  243-245. 
Cosmic  moral  laws,  359. 


Cosmic  year,  65. 

Council  of  Venice,  19,  391. 

Covenant,  the  new,  38,  53. 

Creed-making,  1,  2,  11,  30. 

Criticism  of  Jesus,  32. 

Crusades,  324. 

Curione,  Celio  Secundo,  390. 

Cyrus,  Yahwe's  King,  47,  74. 

Daniel's  'Son  of  man/  38,  50, 

85,  97,   100,   115,   118,  119, 

128,  132. 

Darius  Hystaspis,   70. 
David  as  a  poet,  42. 
"Davidic,"  or  royal  hymns,  69, 

70. 
"Davidic"    prophecies,    37,    42, 

43,  44. 

David,  Francis,  140. 
Dedication,  feast  of,  66,  214. 
Deification  of  men,  2,  3. 
Deists,  21. 
Dionysus,  14. 
Deluge  myth,  56. 
Denck,  estimate  of,  329. 
Didache,  183,  194. 
Divinity  of  kings,  43,  44,  144. 
Dusares,  83. 

Easter,  54. 

Ebionites,  16,  27,  91,  136,  182. 

Ebionitish  Acts  of  the  Apostles, 

185. 

Ecclesiastes,  81. 

Ecclesiasticus     xliv     ff,     author- 
ship of,  75. 
Ektroma,  395,  396. 
Eleazar,  Bar  Kozeba's  associate, 

90. 

Elipandus  of  Toledo,  136. 
Elusa-Chalazath,   83. 
Enoch,  Ethiopic,  78,  79,  84,  85, 

132. 

Enoch,  Slavonic,  81. 
Ephod,  60,  61. 
Erythraean  Sibyl,  77. 


INDEX 


401 


Esau,  53,  58. 

Essenes,  27,  86,  110,  254,  256, 
323. 

Eucharist,  53,  284,  285,  379. 

Euhemerism,  3. 

Evangeliarium  Hierosolymitanum, 
128,  153,  219. 

Evolution,  doctrine  of,  25,  28, 
29,  66,  67. 

Ezekiel  'a  ' '  Messianic ' '  prophe- 
cies, 38,  49. 

Ezra,  Apocalypse  of,  83,  117,  144, 
145,  184. 

Fatherhood  of  God,  152-155,  295. 
Felix  of  Urgel,  136. 
Fourth  Gospel,  211  ff. 
Fox,  George,  333. 
Francis  of  Assisi,  18. 
Francke,  August,  22. 

Garden  of  Eden  myth,  39. 
Gentile,  Valentino,  138. 
Gherlandi,  Giulio,  137,  390,  398. 
Gilyonim,  not  diagrams,  388. 
Giuliano  of  Milan,  330. 
Gnosticism,  12,  15,  16,  133,  151, 

160,  213,  214,  387-389. 
Gnostic  Acts  of  the  Apostles,  185. 
Gods    having    human    offspring, 

143,  249. 

Gog  and  Magog,  91. 
Gospel  ace.  to  Matthew,  218  ff. 

"    "  Mark,  224  ff. 

"    "  Luke,  225  ff. 

"    "  John,  207-217. 

"    "  Peter,  206,  207. 

"    "  Hebrews,  205,  206. 

"    "  Ebionites,  206. 

"    "  Egyptians,  206. 

"    "  Nicodemus,  207. 
Gribaldo,  Matteo,  137. 
Groote,  Gerhard,  18. 
Gula,  82. 

Haetzer,  Ludwig,  137. 


Hagar,  Arabian  tribe,  53,  57. 

Haggai's  "  desire  of  all  na- 
tions," 39,  50. 

Hammurabi's  Code,  301,  370. 

Hamon,  Jean,  333. 

Hasmonaean  kings,  44,  68,  69. 

Hegelian  philosophy,  24. 

Hellenism,  4,  200-204. 

Herborn  Bible,  21. 

Hero-worship,  2. 

Herod  the  Great,  241,  242,  243, 
247. 

Herod  Antipas,  257  ff. 

Herod  Boethus,  266. 

Herodias,  266. 

Hesu,  Keltish  divinity,  17. 

Hesychius,  13. 

Hezekiah,  70. 

Hillel,  355. 

Hofmann,  Melchior,  138. 

Homoousion  17,  322. 

Homoiousion,  322. 

Hosea's  prophecy  of  resurrection, 
38,  45. 

Hubal-Allah,  60. 

Hyrcanus,  son  of  Tobias,  30,  50. 

Ignatian  Epistles,  188-191. 

Imitatio  Christi,  325. 

Immanuel,  47. 

Indian  influence,  169. 

Invisible  Church,  63. 

Isaac,  numen  of  Beersheba,  48, 
57. 

Isaiah  'a  ' '  Messianic ' '  prophe- 
cies, 38,  46,  47. 

Ishara,  82. 

Ishtar,  57,  82. 

Islam,  384. 

James,  Epistle  of,  191. 
Jacob,  numen  of  Shechem,  40,  58. 
Jacob  of  Kefar  Sekanyah,  252. 
Jason,  the  high-priest,  50,  71. 
Japhet  in  Noah's  curse,  40. 
Jehoiachin,  69. 


402 


INDEX 


Jeremiah's  "Messianic"  prophe- 
cies, 38,  48,  49. 

Jerome's  " Hebrew "  Gospel,  205. 
Jesus, 

born  in  Galilee,  240. 

in  the  town  of  Nazareth,  243. 

not  in  Bethlehem,  243,  246, 
247. 

not    a    Davidie    descendant, 
247,  248. 

not  illegitimate,  255. 

son  of  Joseph  and  Mary,  240, 
248. 

probably  6  B.  C.,  240,  243  ff. 

a  carpenter,  not  a  rabbi,  251, 
252.. 

familiar  with  Hebrew  Scrip- 
tures, 251. 

especially    attracted   by   the 
prophets,  252. 

acquainted     with     E  s  s  e  n  i  c 
thought,  254,  255. 

influenced  by  John  the  Bap- 
tist, 259. 

baptized,   probably   early   in 
29  A.  D.,  259-261. 

alone  in  the  wilderness,  262- 
263. 

appearing  as  a  prophet,  263. 

claiming  no  mantic  inspira- 
tion, 383. 

curing  diseases,  264,  265. 

befriending  the  outcast,  268. 

not  an  ascetic,  269. 

rejecting  Sabbath-laws,  269, 
270. 

gathering  disciples,  270,  271. 

preaching  on  the  mount,  272, 
273. 

visited    by    Pharisees    from 
Jerusalem,  274. 

rejecting  ablutions,  275. 

breaking  with  O.   T.  tabus, 
275. 

going  into  exile,  276, 


visiting    Caesarea    Philippi, 

276. 
rejecting  Messiahship  and  all 

lordship,  277,  278,  280. 
coldly    received     in     Caper- 
naum, 278. 

criticising  temple  tax,  279. 
going  through  Peraea,  279. 
quietly  entering  Jerusalem, 

281. 
attacking  the  sacrificial  cult, 

282. 
attacked  by   the   Sadducees, 

282. 

rejecting     dream     of     inde- 
pendence, 283. 
anointed  by  a  woman,  283, 

284. 
eating    with    his     disciples, 

284,  285. 

praying  in  Gethsemane,  285. 
arrested  in  the  garden,  285. 
tried  by  irregular  session  of 

Sanhedrin,  286. 
delivered  to  Pilate  by  Caia- 

phas,  287. 

delivered  to  the  Jews  by  Pi- 
late, 288. 
probably  neither  mocked  nor 

scourged,  288. 
crucified  by  the  Jews,   288, 

289. 
having  his  garments  divided, 

288. 
relieved      with      wine      and 

myrrh,  288. 

uttering  inarticulate  cry,  288. 
probably  buried  in  Joseph's 

tomb,  290. 

on  a  Friday,  14  Nisan,  291. 
in  some  year  between  29  and 

36  A.  D.,  291. 
exercising  great  post-humous 

influence,  319  ff. 
through  the  impression  of  hia 

life,  319, 


INDEX 


403 


through  his  death  as  a  mar- 
tyr, 318. 

through  his  teaching,  319. 
thro'ugh    the    Messiahship 

ascribed  to  him,  319,  320. 
through  his  deification,  322. 
claiming  present  leadership, 

360  ff. 

as  a  seeker  after  truth,  361. 
as  a  deep  and  earnest  think- 
er, 361,  362. 
as  an  artist,  362,  363. 
as  a  social  reformer,  364  ff. 
having  a  message  to  the  mod- 
ern world,  354,  360  ff. 
interested  in  its  vital  ques- 
tions, 360  ff. 
capable     of     inspiring     and 

guiding,  360  ff . 
uniting    his    influence    with 
every  upward  tendency  in 
the  race,  385,  386. 
Job's  Redeemer,  37,  41,  42. 
Jochanan  ben  Torta,  89. 
Jochanan  ben  Zakkai,  182. 
JoeFs  predictions,  38,  45,  46. 
John,  the  Apostle 

alleged  residence  in  Ephesus, 

209-211. 

probable  martyrdom  in  Pales- 
tine, 209-211. 
epistles  ascribed  to,  191. 
John  the  Baptist,  256  ff .,  266,  267. 
John,  the  Presbyter,  192,  210,  211. 
Jonah  as  a  sign,  38. 
Jonathan,  the  high-priest,  71. 
Joshua  ben  Hananiah,  182. 
Joshua  ben  Jehozadak,  71. 
Jozedek,  the  "shoot, "  48. 
Josephus 

disciple  of  Banus,  86,  256. 
acquainted     with     Messianic 

idea,  86,  87. 

silent  as  to  Christianity,  180, 
181. 


familiar  with  story  of  John 

the  Baptist,  257,  258. 
Jubilees,  Book  of,  82. 
Judas,  son  of  Ezekias,  87. 
Judas,  the  Galilean,  87. 
Judas  Iscariot,  37,  43,  285,  286. 
Jude,  Epistle,  191,  192. 

Ira-conception,  165 

Kautz,  Jacob,  137. 

Kenites,  58,  59. 

Kingdom  of  heaven,  32,  36, 
295  ff.,  323. 

Kossuth,  Louis,  Bar  Kozeba  com- 
pared with,  90. 

Labadie,  Jean  de,  22,  333. 
Ladders  for  the  gods,  63. 
Legitimist  tendencies,  72,  73. 
Leontopolis,  temple  of,  76. 
Levi,  son  of  Alphaeus,  268. 
Logos 

mythical  basis  of,  161. 

foreign  influence  on  idea  of, 
161,  162. 

in  Greek  thought,  163-166. 

in  Philo,  166-168. 

in   the   Fourth   Gospel,    159, 
169-170,  213  ff. 

in  the  Targums,  166,  167. 

in  Gnosticism,   170. 

spermatikos,  165,  168,  172. 

endiathetos,    165,    168,    171, 
172. 

prophorilcos,    165,    168,    171, 

172. 

Logia  Jesu,  170,  227. 
Lollards,  136. 
Loisy,  A.,  341. 

Luke,  origin  and  date  of,  235  ff. 
Luther,  estimate  of,  326,  327. 

Machaerus,  266. 
Magnificat,  the,  250. 
Marcion  'a  Gospel,  225  ff , 


404 


INDEX 


Marcionites,  136. 

Mark,  origin  and  date  of,  224  ff. 

Marduk,  75,  118. 

Martini,  Kudolph,  137. 

Mary  Magdalene,  269. 

Matthew,    origin    and    date    of, 

221  ff. 

Melchizedek,  57,  58,  153. 
Melito,  210. 
Memra,  166. 
Menelaus,  50. 
Menander  of  Kapparetaea,   211, 

388. 

Messiah  ben  Joseph,  91,  92. 
Messiah, 

anointed  by  Elijah,  90. 

first  reference  in  60  B.   C., 
68  ff. 

translated    Davidic    descend- 
ant, 83. 
Messianic  prophecy, 

a  misnomer,  51. 

thriving    only    in    Palestine, 
51. 

examined,  35-52. 
Michael,  50,  75,  82,  118,  132. 
Minim,  181,  388. 
Missions,  324,  344,  345. 
Modein,  46,  88. 
Muhammadanism,  385. 
Muratorianum,  184. 
Mysticism,  18. 

Naravana,  133. 

Nazaraeans,  182. 

Nebuchadnezzar,  55,  63. 

Negri,  Francesco,  137,  390. 

Neo -Kantianism,  27. 

Nehemiah,  72. 

Nero,  398. 

Neronic  persecution,  177. 

New  moons,  62. 

Ninib,  82. 

Noah,  Apocalypse  of,  85. 

Noetus,  16, 


Noetians,  136. 
Nominalism,  17,  18. 

Panthera,  200. 

Paraclete,  215. 

Parthenogenesis,  249. 

Paruta,  Nicolao,  390. 

Pagan  references  to  Christianity, 

174-179. 

Parables  of  Enoch,  30,  85,  132, 
Parables  of  Jesus 

lost  coin,  228,  311. 

lost  sheep,  228,  311. 

lost  son,  288,  311. 

vineyard,  312. 

talents,  307. 

unjust  steward,  307. 

sower,  308,  363. 

leaven,  308. 

mustard  seed,  308. 

fishes,  308. 

plant,  309. 

Pharisee  and  Publican,  228, 
313. 

Good  Samaritan,  228,  363. 

Dives  and  Lazarus,  363. 

foolish  virgins,  363. 

widow,  363. 

shepherd,  363. 
Passagii,  136. 
Passover,  52,  62,  214. 
Pataliputra,  162. 
Patarenes,  136. 
Paul  of  Samosata,  16. 
Paul  of  Tarsus, 

acquainted    with    Stoic 
thought,  202. 

representative   of    Helenism, 
202. 

author  of  five  extant  Epis- 
tles, 195,  196  ff. 
Paul  and  Seneca,  174  f. 
Paulianists,  136. 
Paulicians,    136. 
Pauline  Epistles,  193-204. 
Pentecost,  54,  66. 


INDEX 


405 


Periodicity  of  history,  64-66. 
Peter,  Epistle  of,  192,  193. 
Pharao, — type   of   the   devil,   55, 

63. 
Philo, 

silence  concerning  Christian- 
ity, 179. 

Messianic  idea  of,  81. 

Logos-conception  of,  166-168. 
Pietism,  22,  23,  334,  335. 
Pistis  Sophia,  387. 
Plan  of  salvation,  35,  36. 
Pompey,  68. 
Port-Koyalists,  333. 
Poverty,  352. 
Priene-inscription,  144. 
Prophets, 

as  soothsayers,  73,  74. 

like  Moses,  37,  41. 

false  and  true,  73,  74. 
Protestant  Church,  341  ff. 
Protevangel,  36. 
Protevangelium  Jacobi,  207. 
Public  utilities,  353. 
Purusha,  133 
Pythagoreanism,  255. 

Quakerism,  22,  333,  334,  364. 
Quirinius,  241. 

Rachel's  lament,  49. 
Eacine,  Jean,  333. 
Eationalism,  23,  24,  337. 
Resurrection  in  general, 

Pharisaic  view  of,  283. 

Essene  view  of,  255. 

Jesus'  view  of,  125,  255,  283, 
384. 

of  prophets,  46. 

of  John  the  Baptist,  320. 

of  descendant  of  David,  83. 

of   many   when    Jesus   died, 
320. 

not  necessarily  on  last  day, 
320. 


Resurrection  of  Jesus, 

not  predicted  by  him,  126. 
not  prophesied  in  the  Scrip- 
tures, 42,  45,  320  f. 
not  historical,  320,  321,  392- 

398. 
not  believed  because  of  empty 

tomb,  393. 

not  believed  because  of  vis- 
ions, 397. 

believed   because   the   Scrip- 
tures suggested,  mythology 
allowed,  and  love  demanded 
it,  320,  321,  397,  398. 
Revelation  of  John,  184. 
of  Peter,  183. 
of  Paul,  183. 
Revenants,   46,   83,  321. 
Ritschlian  School,  4,  27. 
Rizzetto,  Antonio,  137. 
Roman  Catholic  Church,  340  f. 
Royalist  psalms,  43  f . 

Sabellians,  136. 

Sabbath,  54,  62,  95,  108,  109,  110, 

111,  133,  269,  270,  313. 
Sacraments,  53,  316. 
Sacred  days,  61,  62. 
Sadducees,    182,    282,    283,    286, 

289. 

Samaritan  in  Tirathana,  87. 
Samaritan  Messiah,  87. 
Samaritans  called  Sebastenes,  81. 
Saoshyas,  80,  93. 
Sarah   53,  57. 
Sattler,  Michael,  137. 
Saturnalia,  62. 

Science  and  the  Church,  346  ff. 
Scriptures, 

authority  of,  6. 

known  to  Jesus,  252  f . 

criticised  by  Jesus,  272,  273, 
275,    278  f.,     282,    300  f., 
302,  304  f.,  314,  318. 
Servant  of  Yahwe,  48. 
Segga,  Francesco,  137,  390. 


406 


INDEX 


Sheahbazzar,  47,  69. 

Shiloh,  37,  41. 

Sibylline  oracles,  76  f.,  80  f. 

Sige,  170. 

Simon,  the  high-priest,  77. 

Simon  bar  Kozeba,  82,  88,  116, 

217. 

Simon  Magus,  81,  87,  211. 
Sinai,  62. 
Sin-apal-uzur,  47. 
Slavery,  323,  351,  353. 
Socrates  and  his  School,  164. 
Socialism,  32,  349,  350,  351,  354. 
Society  of  Jesus,  321-323. 
Socinianism,  22. 
Son  of  David,  68. 
Son  of  God, 

second  person  in  Trinity,  135. 

figure  of  speech,  138  f.,  141. 

by  physical  birth,  143. 

by  accession  to  throne,  143, 
144. 

by    translation    or    resurrec- 
tion, 146. 

known  to  the  demons,  148  f. 

alone     knows     the     Father, 
151  f. 

not  used  at  Caesarea,  149. 

not  used  at  the  trial,  149  f . 

not  used  by  centurion,  150. 

used  by  Jesus  only  in  ethical 
sense,  141. 

not   used  by  Jesus   of   him- 
self, 151,  152-154. 
Son  of  Man, 

in  Ezekiel,  99. 

in  Daniel,  100,  116  f. 

in  Enoch,  110,  111. 

in  Jerome's  gospel,  113. 

in  Canonical  gospels,  121  ff. 

not  humanity  by  incarnation, 
94. 

not     equivalent     to     "this 
man/'  95. 

not  ideal  humanity,  96  f. 

not  lowly  humanity,  97  f. 


not  Messianic  title,  98. 

not  used  ty  Jesus  in  Greek, 
130  f. 

not  created  by  Jesus  in  Ara- 
maic, 99. 

translation  of  bar  nasha, 
95  ff. 

used  by  Jesus  only  in  generie 
sense,  104  ff. 

not  used  by  Paul,  113. 

not  used  in  Eevelation,  113. 

not  created  by  the  evangel- 
ists, 102. 

introduced  through  Greek 
version  of  Synoptic  Apo- 
calypse, 103,  105. 

misunderstood  in  Greek  ren- 
dering, 105. 

fashioned  into  title,  105. 

fused  with  Daniel's  angel, 
132. 

fused  with  Gnostic  ideas, 
132  f. 

made  Jesus '  self -designation, 
133. 

substituted  for  other  ex- 
pressions, 122  f . 

variously   rendered    in    Ara- 
maic versions,  127  f.,  130. 
Star  of  Bethlehem,  242,  244. 
Stoicism,  160,  165  f.,  323. 
Sunday,  62,  66. 

Symbolic  interpretation,  335-337. 
Symbolum  Nicaenum,  17. 
Synoptic  Apocalypse,  86,  184. 
Synoptic  Gospels,  217  ff.,  230  ff., 

232-259. 

Tabernacles,  feast  of,  61,  214. 

Tammuz,  14. 

Ta'eb,  87. 

Talmud  on  Jesus,  181-183. 

Taxon,     possibly     Jehudah     ben 

Baba,  82. 
Teaching  of  Jesus, 

on  the  kingdom  of  heaven, 


INDEX 


407 


295-300,  308  f .,  382. 
on  the  inner  rectitude,  300  f . 
on     overcoming     evil     with 

good,  281,  285,  301,  364. 
on   the   slaying   of   enemies, 

300  f. 

on  the  treatment  of  crimin- 
als, 301  f .,  365  ff. 
on  oath-taking,  302  f .,  368  f . 
on    royalty     and    authority, 

303  f.,  366  f., 
on  marriage  and  divorce,  304, 

369  ff. 

on  celibacy,  304,  372. 
on  private  wealth,  305,  307, 

374-378. 
on  sharing  and  lending,  305, 

307,  315  f .,  376. 
on  the  law  of  increase,  307. 
on  the  law  of  compensation, 

311. 
on  the  Perfect  Being,   310- 

313,  383. 

on  the  divine  method,  311. 
on  the  survival  of  the  worth- 
iest, 312,  382. 
on  ablutions,  275,  313,  379. 
on  tabus,  275,  313. 
on  Sabbath-keeping,  269, 313, 

379. 
on   the  sacrificial   cult,   282, 

313,  378,  383. 

on  public  prayer,  313  f .,  379. 
on  public  fasting,  269,  314  f . 
on  public  almsgiving,  315  f. 
on  taxation  for  religious 

purposes,  279,  379. 
on  asceticism,  269,  369. 
not  meant  for  a  millennium, 

305. 

not  provisional,  307  f. 
not  impracticable,   309  f . 
neglected    in    the   Ecumenic 

creeds,  293  f. 
neglected  by  N.  T.  writers, 

294  f. 


helpful  at  the  present  time, 

355,  360  ff . 
Theodotion,  16. 
Theodotians,  136. 
Theologia  Germanica,  18. 
Therapeutae,  323. 
Theudas,  87. 
Tiamat,  118. 
Tiridates,  246. 
Tiziano,  137. 
Travels  of  Peter,  185. 
Travels  of  Paul,  185. 
Travels  of  James,  185. 
Travels  of  John,  185. 
Two  natures,  173. 
Two-source  theory,  227  ff. 
Two  Ways,  the,  183. 
Tubingen    School,    24,    26,    141, 

184  f .,  196. 
Typology,  35  f .,  52-67. 

Unitarianism,  4,  22. 

Cf.  Baptists 
Universalism,  22. 

Cf .  Baptists 
Upanishads,  347. 
Urim  and  Thummim,  60. 

Vahu  Mano,  45. 

Virgin  birth,  38,  46  f.,  135,  137, 

139,  249,  250,  251. 
Virgin  Mary  cult,  325. 

Waldenses,  136. 

War,  32,  330  ff.,  334,  350  ff.,  354, 

357,  358. 

We-source  in  Acts,  186,  226. 
Weeks,  feast  of,  54,  62. 
Williams,  Roger,  22. 
Wisdom,  book  of,  81. 
" Wisdom  of  God,"  14,  85,  8G, 

184,  232. 

Wolfenbuttler  Fragmente,  22. 
Woman 's     emancipation,     353  f ., 

370,  374. 


408 


INDEX 


Yah  we 's  son,  the  king,  143. 
Yaldabaoth,  82. 


Zealots,  87. 


Zeehariah  's  l '  Messianic ' '  prophe- 
cies, 39,  50  f. 
Zerubbabel,  47,  50,  69  f . 
Zir  Amiluti,  119. 
Zoe  and  Logos,  170. 


Zechariah,  son  of  Barachiah,  86,      Zoroastrian  influence,  387. 


185,  232. 


Zwingli,  estimate  of,  326-328. 


II.    INDEX  TO  AUTHORS 


Aal,  Anathon,  163,  164,  166,  172. 

Abbott,  Ezra,  14. 

Alford,  Henry,  14. 

Anaxagoras,  164. 

Anz,  W.,  388. 

Appel,  H.,  94. 

Apuleius,  174. 

Aristides,  183. 

Aristo  of  Pella,  183. 

Arnold,  Gottfried,  334,  387. 

Arrian,  60,  175. 

Athanasius,  160,  172. 

Athenagoras,  171,  183. 

Augustine,  175. 

Bacher,  Wilhelm,  88. 
Bacon,  Benjamin  Wisner,  208. 
Baethgen,  Friedrich,  83. 
Baldensperger,   Wilhelm,   29,   98, 

106,  115. 

Ballenstedt,  G.,  25. 
Bardt,  Karl  Friedrich,  23. 
Barnabas,  187. 
Baudissin,  Wolf,  83. 
Bauer,  Bruno,  22,  24,  101  f.,  141, 

167,    175,    185,    195  f.,    202, 

207. 
Baur,    Ferdinand    Christian,    24, 

97  f.,   101,   141,   184,   194  f., 

196,  207,  387. 
Beck,  J.  T.,  25. 
Beer,  Georg,  45,  79. 
Benrath,  Karl,  137. 
Benzinger,  Immanuel,  55. 
Berkeley,  George,  346. 
Bertholdt,  Ludwig,  91,  107. 


Beurlier,  E.,  144. 
Bevan,  Anthony  Ashley,  106,  114. 
Beyschlag,  Wilhelm,  97. 
Beza,  Theodor,  96. 
Blount,  Charles,  21. 
Blumenbach,  J.  F.,  25. 
Bolingbroke,  Henry  St.  John,  21. 
Bolten,  Johann  Adrian,  95  f . 
Bonfrere,  Jacques,  20. 
Bostrom,  Jakob,  27,  347. 
Bousset,  Wilhelm,   13  f.,   63,   81, 

88,  129  f.,  212,  323. 
Bruston,  C.,  44. 
Brahe,  Tycho,  21. 
Brandt,  Wilhelm,  30,  60,  103, 150, 

152,  252,  260,  389,  395. 
Breasted,  James  H.,  162. 
Bretschneider,  Karl  Gottlieb,  101, 

207. 

Briggs,  Charles  Augustus,  27,  81. 
Bruce,  James,  117. 
Bruckner,  W.,  100. 
Bruins,  J.  A.,  103,  197. 
Bruno,  Giordano,  21,  140. 
Budde,  Karl,  48. 
Buffon,  G.  L.  L.,  25. 
Bunsen,  C.  K.  J.,  387. 

Caldecott,  W.  Shaw,  61. 

Calvin,  John,  18,  189. 

Cantu,  Cesare,  136. 

Carlstadt,    Andreas    Bodenstein, 

20,  193. 

Carpenter,  J.  Estlin,  100. 
Cary,  G.  L.,  99. 
Cassel,  Paul,  250. 


INDEX 


409 


Cassels,  W.  E.,  27,  208. 

Castelli,  E.,  61. 

Cellarius,  Martin,  137. 

Celsus,  12,  16,  90,  145,  179,  190, 

208. 
Charles,  B.  H.,  30,  79,  81  f.,  99, 

106,  116. 

Chateillon,  Sebastian,  77,  328. 
Chemnitz,  Martin,  189. 
Cheyne,   Thomas  Kelley,  27,  42, 

45,  47,  72,  243,  256,  257,  271. 
Chrysippus,  165. 
Cleanthes,  165. 
Clemen,  Carl,  106,  120. 
Clement  of  Alexandria,  105,  171, 

205. 

Clement  of  Borne,  187,  188. 
Colani,  T.,  27. 
Collins,  Anthony,  21. 
Comba,  Emilio,  19,  137,  160,  207. 
Conybeare,  C.  F.,  148,  323. 
Cone,  Orello,  103. 
Copernicus,  Nicolas,  21. 
Cureton,  William,  189. 
Curione,  Celio  Secundo,  137. 
Cyprian,  259. 

Dallaeus,  Johannes,  189. 
Dalman,  Gustaf,  90,  106,  114  f., 

144 f,  151,  250,  297,  309. 
Darwin,  Charles,  25. 
Davidson,  Samuel,  27. 
Deissmann,  G.  A.,  144. 
Delff,  Hugo,  388. 
Denck,   Hans,   19,   137  f.,   139  f., 

328  f.,   391. 
Denifle,  F.  H.  S.,  327. 
De  Wette,  W.  M.  L.,  24,  193,  196. 
Diderot,  Denis,  23. 
Dieterich,  A.,  83,  246. 
Dillmann,  August,  v,  25,  53. 
Dio  Cassius,  246. 
Dio  Chrysostom,  175,  323. 
Diodorus  Siculus,  55. 
Dionysius  of  Corinth,  187. 
Dippel,  Conrad,  22,  335. 


Dodge,  Ebenezer,  v. 
Driver,  Samuel  B.,  106,  122,  130  f. 
Drummond,  James,  106,  120,  144. 
Duhm,  Bernhard,  28,  42,  44,  50, 

76  f., 
Dulk,  Albert,  32. 

Edelmann,  August,  22,  140,  335. 
Eerdmans,  B.  D.,  30,  104,  105. 
Eichhorn,  Albert,  284. 
Eichhorn,  J.  G.,  25,  193,  199,  247. 
Eliezer,  Babbi,  182. 
Emerson,  Balph  Waldo,  24,  347. 
Empedocles,  164. 
Epictetus,  175. 

Epiphanius,  82  f .,  160,  250,  260. 
Erasmus,  Desiderius,  18,  138. 
Eusebius,  88,  181,  218,  257. 
Evanson,  E.,  193,  196,  207. 
Ewald,  Heinrich,  25,  151. 

Fairbairn,  Patrick,  53. 
Fenelon,  Francois,  22. 
Fichte,  Immanuel  Hermann,  346. 
Fiebig,  Paul,  106,  128. 
Flacius,  Matthias,  189. 
Flemming,  J.,  116. 
Freytag,  G.  A.,  212. 
Friedlander,  M.,  388. 
Fries,  Samuel,  208,  211. 
Fritzsche,  K.  F.  A.,  96. 

Galilei,  Galileo,  21. 
Geiger,  Abraham,  48,  80. 
Ge"nebrard,  Gilbert,  95.. 
George,  J.  F.  L.,  24. 
George,  the  Sinner,  210. 
Gerlach,  E.,  181. 
Gfrorer,  A.  F.,  163. 
Gibbon,  Edward,  323. 
Gieseler,  J.  K.  L.,  180. 
Ginzel,  Friedrich  Karl,  292. 
Ginzberg,  Louis,  83. 
Goethe,  Johann  Wolfgang,  23. 
Graf,  Karl  Heinrich,  26.. 
Gramberg,  C.  P.  W.,  24. 


410 


INDEX 


Grill,  Julius,  50,  163,  169,  208, 

389. 

Grossmann,  C.  G.  L.,  168. 
Grotius,  Hugo,  95,  138,  193. 
Gunkel,  Hermann,  63,  106,   118, 

184. 
Guyon,  Jeanne  Marie,  22. 

Hackmann,  H.,  47. 

Haeckel,  Ernst,  25. 

Hadrian,  178. 

Halevy,  Joseph,  242. 

Harnack,   Adolph,   13,   105,   113, 

175,    184,    193,    206  f.,    208, 

212,  250,  388,  394. 
Harper,  Eobert  Francis,  370. 
Harris,  J.  Eendel,  250. 
Hartmann,  Eduard,  347. 
Hase,  Karl,  26. 
Hasenclever,  A.  H.  F.,  176. 
Hausrath,  Karl,  87,  99. 
Havernick,  K.  F.,  25. 
Heath,  Eichard,  19. 
Heberle,  K.,  137. 
Hegel,  G.  W.  F.,  24,  336,  346. 
Hegesippus,  183,  188. 
Hengstenberg,  E.  W.,  25,  53. 
Henke,  C.  F.,  25. 
Heinrici,  G.,  387. 
Heinze,  J.  M.,  163. 
Heracleon,  208. 
Heraclitus,  160,  163,  164. 
Herbert  of  Cherbury,  140. 
Herder,  J.  G.,  23,  96. 
Herrmann,  Wilhelm,  27. 
Hermas,  183,  184. 
Herodotus,  55. 
Heuzey,  Leon,  55. 
Hilgenfeld,   Adolph,   26,   77,   98, 

106,  113,  127,  196,  207,  241, 

387. 

Hilgenfeld,  Eudolph,  241. 
Hillmann,  J.,  148,  250. 
Hippolytus,  171,  388. 
Hitzig,  Ferdinand,  100. 
Hoekstra,  S.,  100. 


Hofmann,  J.  C.  K.,  25,  100. 
Hollmann,  G.,  196. 
Holsten,  Karl,  98,  195,  196. 
Holtzmann,  H.  J.,  13,  97,  101  f ., 

123,  196,  207,  258. 
Holtzmann,  Oskar,  13,  259. 
Hommel,  Fritz,  57,  119. 
Honig,  W.,  388. 
Horst,  G.  C.,  207,  336. 
Hort,  F.  J.  A.,  13,  14. 
Houbigant,  Charles  Francois,  21, 

138. 

Hubmaier,  Balthasar,  19,  328. 
Hulsius,  Anton,  52. 
Hume,  David,  21. 
Huxley,  Thomas,  25. 
Huyghens,  Christian,  21. 

Ibn  Ezra,  Abraham,  18,  100. 
Ibn  Hisham,  71. 
Ignatius,  170,  187-191. 
Ilgen,  D.  F.,  140. 
Irenaeus,  171,  208,  242. 

Jacobsen,  August,  102. 
Jansen,  Cornelius,  333. 
Jehudah,  Eabbi,  181. 
Jensen,  Peter,  56,  82. 
Jeremias,  Alfred,  119. 
Jerome,  113,  175,  205,  259. 
Joel,  Marcus,  182,  197. 
Joris,  David,  138. 
Jose  bar  Zabda,  181. 
Josephus,   31,   861,    179  f.,   181, 

241,  252,  258,  303  f .,  318. 
Jiilicher,  A.,  123,  124,  152. 
Julius  Africanus,  88. 
Justin  Martyr,  90,  171,  183,  290. 
Justus  of  Tiberius,  181. 
Juvenal,  175. 

Kalthoff,  A.,  197. 

Kant,  Immanuel,  23,  336,  347. 

Keil,  C.  F.,  25. 

Keim,  Theodor,  26,  137,  181,  242. 

Keller,  Ludwig,  19. 


INDEX 


411 


Kepler,  Johann,  244,  245. 
Kirkegaard,  Soren,  27. 
Kittel,  Budolph,  68. 
Klopper,  A.,  106,  120,  151. 
Koch,  A.  (Opsopaeus),  77. 
Kohler,  Kaufmann,  155. 
Kreyenbiihl,  Johannes,  208,  211, 

388. 

Krop,  E.  J.,  106,  117. 
Kuenen,  Abraham,  26,  28,  74. 
Kuinoel,  C.  T.,  96. 

Lagarde,  Paul  de,  30,  103,  104. 
Lamarck,  J.  B.  P.  A.,  25. 
Lawrence,  Eichard,  117. 
Leclerc,   Jean,  22. 
Leasing,  G.  E.,  22  f. 
Levy,  Jacob,  91. 
Lewald,  J.  K.  A.,  387. 
Lietzmann,   Hans,   30,   105,   114, 

116. 

Lightfoot,  G.  B.,  194. 
Lindgren,  H.  G.,  27. 
Lipsius,  Eichard  A.,  83,  105,  387. 
Locke,  John,  22,  140. 
Loman,  A.  D.,  181,  185,  197. 
Lubieniecky,  Stanislas,  390. 
Lucian  of  Samosata,  179,  190. 
Lucius,  P.,  255. 
Ludolph,  Senior,  136. 
Luther,  Martin,  18,  326,  327. 
Lyra,  Nicolas  de,  94. 

Madden,  F.  W.,  88. 
Malalas,  Johannes  190. 
Manchot,  C.  H.,  175. 
Manelfi,  136,  137. 
Marcion,  15,  112,  193. 
Marcus  Aurelius,  178,  190. 
Marquart,  J.,  77,  246. 
Marti,  Karl,  47,  77,  106,  110. 
Massebieau,  L.,  323. 
Massuet,  Eene",  387. 
Matthes,  J.  C.,  33,  74,  197. 
Mayerhoff,  L.,  194,  197. 
Mead,  G.  B.  S.,  387. 


Megethius,  105. 

Menzies,  Allan,  131. 

Merx,  Adalbert,  91,  147,  150,  248, 

306. 

Meyboom,  H.  U.,  197. 
Meyer,  Arnold,  30,  105,  106. 
Meyer,  Eduard,  70. 
Michaelis,  Johann  David,  23. 
Minucius  Felix,  190. 
Moore,  George  Foote,  61. 
Morin,  Jean,  20. 
Mosheim,  Johann  Lorenz,  387. 
Miiller,  Herrmann,  24. 
Minister,  Sebastian,  138. 
Muss-Arnolt,  W.,  60. 
Myrberg,  O.  F.,   27. 

Neander,  August,  25,  96. 
Nestle,  Eberhard,  14. 
Newman,  A.  H.,  19. 
Newton,  Isaac,  21. 
Nicole,  Pierre,  333. 
Niese,  Benedict,  181,  258. 
Noldeke,  Theodor,  26,  106. 
Nosgen,  C.  F.,  99. 
Noyes,  George  E.,  24. 

Oefele,  Felix,  244. 
Ohle,  E.,  255. 
Olshausen,  Justus,  42. 
Oort,  H.  L.,  103. 
Origen,   82,   145,   171. 
Overbeck,  Franz  Camillo,  178. 

Paine,  Thomas,  23. 
Palfrey,  John  G.,  24. 
Papias,  183. 
Parker,  Theodore,  24. 
Parmenides,  163. 
Pascal,  Blaise,  333. 
Paulus,  H.  E.  G.,  23,  96. 
Peiser,  F.  E.,  50. 
Penn,  William,  22. 
Pereira,  Bento,  20. 
Peritz,  Ismar,  370. 
Pfleiderer,  Erich,  164. 


412 


INDEX 


Pfleiderer,  Otto,  26,  106,  184  f., 
196,  202,  208,  246,  323. 

Philo,  31,  55,  81,  146,  160,  162, 
164,  165,  166,  167,  168,  169, 
179,  249,  304,  323. 

Philaster,  160. 

Photius,  181. 

Pierson,  Allard,  74,  197. 

Piscator,  Johannes,  21,  138. 

Plato,  160,  164,  165. 

Pliny  the  Younger,  175,  192,  195. 

Ploss,  H.  H.,  55. 

Polycarp,  189,  191,  194. 

Polycrates,  210. 

Porphyry,  12,  16. 

Porter,  Prank  C.,  47. 

Preuschen,  Erwin,  80. 

Ptolemy,  15. 

Quadratus,  183. 

Eab  Abina,  181. 
Bab  Jose,  181. 
Eamsay,  William  M.,  241. 
Eeimarus,  Hermann  Samuel,  22. 
Eeinach,  Solomon,  181. 
Eenan,  Ernest,  29. 
Eenato,  Camillo,  137. 
Ee>ille,  Albert,  30,  207. 
Beville,  Jean,  163,  169,  208. 
Ehees,  Eush,  105,  115. 
Eitschl,  Albrecht,  27,  102. 
Eoehrich,  G.  G.,  139. 
Eousseau,  Jean  Jacques,  23. 
Eydberg,  Viktor,  v,  27,  101. 

Sand,  Christoph,  390. 
Sanday,  William,  130  f .,  263. 
Scaliger,  Joseph,  189. 
Schaff,  Philip,  14. 
Schechter,  Solomon,  90. 
Schelling,  F.  W.  J.,  346,  347. 
Schenkel,  Daniel,  14. 
Schleiermacher,  F.  E   D.,  24,  96, 

193. 
Schmidt,  Carl,  387. 


Schmidt,  J.  G.  C.,  193,  196. 
Schmiedel,     Paul,     106,     109  f., 

112  f.,  177,  208,  393,  396. 
Schmoller,   Otto,   32. 
Schueckenburger,  Matthias,  60 
Schnedermann,  G.  H.,  99. 
Scholten,  J.  H.,  26,  207. 
Scholten,  W.,  98. 
Schopenhauer,  Arthur,  347. 
Schulz,  David,  13. 
Schiirer,  Emil,  164,  181,  241,  258. 
Schuster,  Paul,  164. 
Schurmann,  Anna  Maria  van,  22. 
Schwegler,  Albert,  25,  193,  207. 
Schweizer,  Alexander,  212. 
Scrivener,  F.  H.  J.,  14. 
Sellin,  Ernst,  47. 
Semler,   Johann   Salomo,    13,   23, 

175,  193,  199,  387. 
Seneca,    Lucius     Annaeus,     174, 

198  f .,  328. 

Serapion  of  Antioch,  206. 
Servetus,     Michael,     20,     137  f., 

139  f.,  328,  330,  391. 
Siegfried,  Karl,  163,  167. 
Simon,  Eichard,  21. 
Smith,  Adam,  323. 
Smith,  W.  B.,  197. 
Smith,    William    Eobertson,    27, 

29,  71. 

Soderblom,  Nathan,  80,  317. 
Soulier,  A.,  163,  168. 
Sozzini,  Lelio,  137,  390,  391. 
Sozzini,  Fausto,  140. 
Spallanzani,  Lazaro,  25. 
Spencer,  Herbert,  25. 
Spener,  Jakob,  22. 
Spinoza,  Baruch,  22,  335. 
Spitta,  Friedrich,   208. 
Stade,  Bernhard,  28,  47,  59,  76. 
Staerk,  Willy,  106. 
Stave,  Erik,  45. 
Steindorff,  Georg,  55. 
Steck,    Eudolph,    176,    185,    194, 

196,  197. 
Stevens,  George  B.,  106,  120. 


INDEX 


413 


Storr,  G.  C.,  101. 

Straatman,  J.  W.,  199,  395  f . 

Strabo,  55. 

Strauss,  David  Friedrich,  24,  85, 

98,  207,  387. 
Suetonius,  177,  178. 

Tacitus,  176,  177,  178. 

Tatian,  171,  183,  208. 

Tauler,  Johann,  18. 

Tertullian,  105,  171,  241. 

Trajan,  176. 

Tregelles,  S.  P.,  13. 

Thales,  163. 

Thayer,  Joseph  Henry,  150. 

Theodotion,  16. 

Theophilus  of  Antioch,  171,  208. 

Thoma,  A.,  208. 

Thomas  a  Kempis,  18. 

Tiele,  C.  P.,  45. 

Tischendorf,  A.  F.  C.,  14. 

Toland,  John,  21,  140. 

Tolstoi,  Leo,  317. 

Torrey,  C.  C.,  73. 

Toy,  C.  H.,  27. 

Treschel,  Friedrich,  390. 

Turner,  C.  H.,  241. 

Uloth,  C.  E.  B.,  104. 
Usener,  Hermann,  56,  246,  249. 
Usteri,  J.  M.,  99. 
Usteri,  L.,  193. 

Valdez,  Juan,  138. 

Valentinus,  15,  29,  170,  208,  211, 

389. 

Van  Loon,  F.,  197. 
Van  Manen,  W.  C.,  103,  106,  113, 

175,  185,  186,  195,  196,  197, 

199,  200,  208. 
Vatablus,  F.,  138. 
Vatke,  Wilhelm,  24. 
Vermigli,  Pietro,  138. 
Vernes,  Maurice,  77, 


Vischer,  Eberhard,  184. 

Volter,  Daniel,  250. 

Volkmar,  Gustav,  30,  102  f .,  181, 

191,  257. 

Vollborth,  J.  C.,  387. 
Voltaire,  F.  M.  A.,  23. 
Volz,  Paul,  47. 

Weinel,  Heinrich,  71. 

Weiss,  Bernhard,  13,  98. 

Weiss,  Johannes,  32,  104. 

Weisse,  C.  H.,  26,  96  f .,  101,  212. 

Weizsacker,  Carl,  26,  99,  208. 

Wellhausen,  Julius,  28,  44,  50,  72, 
82,  104  f .,  106,  108,  112,  114, 
150,  184  f.,  243,  317. 

Wendland,  P.,  323. 

Wendt,  Heinrich,  98,  212. 

Wernle,  Paul,  123. 

Westcott,  B.  F.,  13. 

Westerburg,  E.,  175. 

Whiston,  William,  140. 

White,  Andrew  D.,  34. 

Whiton,  James  M.,  x. 

Wieseler,  K.  G.,  180. 

Wikner,  Pontus,  27. 

Wilamowitz-Moellendorf,  Ulrich, 
64. 

Wilke,  C.  G.,  101. 

Williams,  Eowland,  27. 

Willrich,  Hugo,  50. 

Winckler,  Hugo,  57,  65. 

Wiszowazzi,  Andreas,  390. 

Wittichen,  Carl,  99. 

Wolf,  Christian,  23. 

Woolston,  Thomas,  21. 

Wrede,  Wilhelm,  30, 103,  149, 196. 

Xenophanes,  163. 

Zeller,  Eduard,  25,  255. 
Zeno,  165. 

Zinzendorf,   Nicholas,   22,  23, 
Zwingli,  Ulrich,  18, 


414 


INDEX 


ILL  INDEX  OF  TEXTS 


GENESIS 

i,  2 63 

iii,  15 36,39 

iv,  3 58 

vi,  Iff ....78,  142  f. 

vii,  1  ff 53 

ix,  25-27 37,  39  f. 

xiv,  Iff 57 

xv,  17 54,  63 

xvii,  Iff 53 

xvii,  3 37,  40,  41 

xxii,  Iff 54 

xxviii,  1  ff 54 

xxxv,  14 71 

xxxviii,  13   .71 

xlix,  10 37,  41,  80 

EXODUS 

iii,  2, 55,  63 

iv,  22 154 

vii,  16  62 

x,  25  ff 62 

xi,  1-8 62 

xii,  Iff 53 

xiv,  21  ff 53 

xvi,  Iff 53 

xvii,  Iff 53 

xxv,  9 65 

LEVITICUS 

xix,  12, 302 

xx,  10 373 

xxiv,  18    301 

xxiv,  20 301 

NUMBERS 
xxiv,  17 37,  41,  80,  88,  246 

DEUTERONOMY 

i,  31 154 

viii,5 154 

xiv,  1 154 

xviii,  15 37,  41 

xxii,  22  ff 373 

xxiii,  19,  20 305 

xxxii,  6 154 

xxxii,  8 143 


JUDGES 

viii,  27  .61 

I  SAMUEL 

ii,  25  95 

x,  2   49 

x,  9 143 

xiv,  10 71 

xvi,  13 71 

II  SAMUEL 

vii,  2ff 44,  69,  72 

xiv,  17 43 

xiv,  20   43 

II  KINGS 
xix,  15   71 

ISAIAH 

i,  2 154 

ii,  Iff 38 

vii,  14 38,  46,  249 

viii,  23 38,  92 

ix,  Iff 243 

ix,  5  ff  . .  .38,  43,  47,  70,  74,  80 

ix,  6 144 

xi,  Iff 38,  70,  74 

xix,  16-25 76 

xxiv-xxvii 77 

xxx,  1 154 

xiv,  3 140 

xlix-lv 74 

xlix,  16   65 

Iii,  13-liii,  12 38,  48 

liii,  7 56,  92 

liii,  9 398 

lix,  20 38,  48 

Ix,  Iff 246 

Ixi,  Iff 38,  48 

bdv,  8 154 

JEREMIAH 

iii,  4 154 

iii,  19  154 

ix,  25   55 

xxiii,  5,  6 38,  48 

xxx,  8 74 

xxxi,  9 154 

d,  15 , 38,  49 


INDEX 


415 


xxxi,    22 38,    49,    38 

xxxi,  31 38,  49 

EZEKIEL 

xi,  10 38,  49 

xvii,  22 38,  74 

xxi,  32 38,  49 

xxxiii,  15 38,  49 

xxxiv,  23,  24 38 

xxxvii,  24  ff 38 

xl,  Iff 55,  63 

HOSEA 

ii,  1  154 

vi,  2 38,  45,  321 

xi,  1 38,  45,  247 

JOEL 

iii,  1 38,  45  f. 

AMOS 

ix,  11  ff 46,  74 

OBADIAH 

vs.    18 38,    46 

JONAH 

i,  11  ff 38,  46 

ii,  1   321 

MICAH 

iv-vii 46 

v,  1  246 

v,  1,  2 38 

v,  2 46 

HAGGAI 

ii,  7 39,  50 

ii,  23   74 

ZECHARIAH 

i,  6 74 

iii,  7 71 

iii,  8 39,  50 

iv,  6ff 74 

iv,  14 ...71 

vi,  12    39 

ix,  9 39,  50,  138 

xi,  12 39 

xii,  10   91 

xiii,  7 39,  50 

MALACHI 
iii,  1 39,  51,  61,  63 


PSALMS 

ii,  Iff 37,  43,  44,  72 

viii,  Iff 37,  42 

xvi,  Iff 37,  42 

xvi,  8-11   320 

xviii,  Iff 43 

xx,  1  ff 43 

xxi,  Iff 37,  43 

xxii,  Iff 37,  42 

xxiv,  Iff 37,  42 

xl,  Iff 37,  42,  43 

xli,  10 37,  43 

xlv,  1  ff 37,  43,  44,  72 

1,  Iff 255 

Ivii,  2  43 

Ixi,  Iff.  43 

Ixiii,  1  ff 43 

Ixv,  Iff 255 

Ixviii,  19 ..37,  43 

Ixxii,  Iff 37,44,45,  72 

Ixxiii,  15 154 

Ixxxii,  1  ff 43 

Ixxxiv,  1  ff 43 

Ixxxix,  Iff 43,  44 

ex,  1  ff 37,  43,  44,  77,  80 

cxviii,  22 37,  43 

cxxxii,  1  ff 43 

PROVERBS 

viii,  22  ff 38,  45 

JOB 

xix,  25,  26 37,  41,  42 

CANTICLES 
i,  Iff 38,  45 

ECCLESIASTES 

i,  Iff. 81 

ESTHER 

vi,  14 155 

DANIEL 

iii,  25  119 

vii,  13.  .38,  50,  85,  97,  100, 115, 

118,  119,  128,  132 

viii,  15  119 

ix,  21 119 

ix,  24-27 38,  50 

x,   5 119,   138 


416 


INDEX 


x,  16 119 

xii,  6,  7 119,  138 

NEHEMIAH 

vi,  7   72 

I  MACCABEES 

xiv,  41   44 

xiv,  46 77 

II  MACCABEES 

ii,  5ff 87 

III  MACCABEES 

vi,  28  155 

ECCLESIASTICUS 

iv,  11 154 

xxiii,  Iff 154 

xlvii,  11   68 

xlviii,  10 75 

li,  Iff 152 

li,  12  (Hebrew  addition),.  ..90 

WISDOM  OF  SOLOMON 

ii,  18  154 

v,5  147 

xviii,  13  155 

JUDITH 

ix,4 155 

ENOCH  (Ethiopic) 

i-xxxvi 78 

xxxvii-lxxi..30,  84,  85,  86,  92, 

125,  132,  192 

xxxvii,  1  ff 85 

xxxviii,  Iff 85 

xxxix,    1,    2a 85 

xxxix,  3-13  85 

xl,  Iff 85 

xli,  1,  2 85 

xli,  3-8  .85 

xlii,  Iff 85 

xliii,  Iff 85 

xliv,  Iff 85 

xiv,  3,  4 85 

xlvi,  Iff 85,  117 

xlvi,  2,  3,  4 101 

xlvi,  3 85,  119 

xlvi,  2,  5,  6 85 

xlyii,  Iff ,,.,$5 


xlviii,  1  ff 85 

xlviii,  2 101 

xlviii,  8-10  85 

1,  Iff 85 

li,  Iff 85 

liii,  1-5 85 

liii,  6 85 

liv,  1-6,  7 85 

Iv,  2,  3,  4 85 

Ivi,  Iff 85 

Ivii,  Iff 85 

Iviii,  Iff 85 

Ix,  Iff 85 

Ixi,  8,  9 .85 

Ixii,  Iff 85 

Ixii,  7,9,  14 101 

Ixiii,  Iff 85 

Ixiii,  11 101 

Ixv,  1-lxix,  25 85 

Ixix,  26  f.,  29 101 

Ixix,  26  ff 85 

Ixx,  Iff 85 

Ixxi,  Iff 85 

Ixxi,  Iff 101 

Ixxxvii-xc  78 

Ixxxvii,  2  .119 

Ixxxix,  52 78 

xc,  38   79 

xci,  12-19 79 

xci-civ 79 

xciii,  3  ff 79 

cv,  2  144 

ENOCH    (Slavonic) 
lix,  2  81 

APOCALYPSE  OF  BARUCH 

vi,  Iff 87 

xxix,  3 83 

xxx,  1  83 

xxxix,  7  ....83 

xl,  3 83 

Ixxii,  2-6   83 

APOCALYPSE  OF  EZRA 

v,  56  84 

vi,  6   84 

vi,  58 155 

vii,  28  ff 83,  144 


INDEX 


417 


ix,  43  ff 84 

x,  44ff 84 

xii,  31  ff 84 

xii,  32,  37,  52 144 

xiii,  Iff 84,  101,  117 

xiv,  9   145 

JUBILEES 

xxxi,  18   82 

TESTAMENTS     OF    THE    TWELVE 

PATRIARCHS 

Dan.  vi,  1  ff 82 

ASSUMPTION  OF  MOSES 

i,  6   82 

ix,  Iff 82 

x,  27 155 

PSALTER  OF  SOLOMON 

vii,  30   155 

xvii,  4 89 

xvii,  5   89 

xvii,  21   89 

xvii,  36   68 

SIBYLLINE  ORACLES 

III,  46-62 80 

111,47,  48 81 

III,  75-92 80 

III,  286 77 

III,  652-660. . : 76,  77 

III,  702   155 

MATTHEW 

i,  Iff 69,  89 

i,  M7 247 

i,  6,   317 

i,  16 248 

i,  18-ii,  23 249 

ii,  Iff 243 

ii,  6   246 

ii,   247 

ii,  23   243 

i«,    17 146 

iv,  Iff 148 

iv,  3-6   146 

iv,  1-11    262 

iv,  1-17   298 

v,  9 146,  155 

v,  11  123 

v,  27-30  372 


v,  32  304 

v,  45 155,  268 

v,  48 313 

vi,  1-4   316 

vi,  5 311 

vi,  5-8   314 

vi,  9ff 153 

vi,  14 317 

vi,  16-18   314 

vi,  22  ff 301 

vi,  33 299 

vi,  42   305 

vii,  11 155,  313 

vii,  17  ff 300 

viii,  5ff 267 

viii,  20 105,  111,  121,  124 

ix,  6 95,  121,  125,  268 

ix,  9-13   268 

ix,  14-17   269 

ix,  16  f ....314 

x,  23 96,  121,  122 

x,  32 123 

xi,  Iff 270 

xi,  2ff 261,  266 

xi,  7ff 267 

xi,  9   105 

xi,  19 121,  124,  269 

xi,  25  ff 151 

xi,  27 146 

xii,  Iff 270 

xii,  8 94,  121,  125 

xii,  27   264 

xii,  28   265 

xii,  32. .  .95,  105,  112,  121,  124 

xii,  40 121,  124,  321 

xii,  46   321 

xiii,  Iff 308 

xiii,  31  f 308 

xiii,  33 308 

xiii,  37-41   121  f. 

xiii,  47  ff 308 

xiv,  2 266,  320 

xiv,  3    258 

xiv,  33 146 

xvi,  13 94 

xvi,  13,  14 46,  112,  113,  320 


418  INDEX 

xvi,    13-20 121  f.  xxvii,  40   146 

xvi,  16 146,  148          xxvii,  52  f 320 

xvi,  27 121,  125          xxvii,  54   146 

xvi,  28    121  f.          xxviii,  1  321 

xvii,  1  ff 148          xxviii,  1-8 394 

xvii,  5 146          xxviii,  1-20 394  f. 

xvii,  9   121          xxviii,  4  395 

xvii,  10-13  124          xxviii,  7  393 

xvii,  12 121,  125          xxviii,  16  392 

xvii,  22 121,  125          xxviii,  16-20    392 

xviii,  11   123          xxviii,  19  146 

xviii,  18  107  MARK 

xix,  9 304          i,  1 146  f. 

xix,  10-12   372          i,  11   146 

xix,  11  f 304          ii,  10 105,  107,  121,  125 

xix,  18  ff 317          ii,  13-17  268 

xix,  28  f 121,  123          ii,  23  ff 108,  270 

xx,  1-16 311          ii,  26  270 

xx,  18 121,  125          ii,  28 95,  105,  121,  125 

xx,  28 121,  124          iii,  11 146,  148 

xxi,  12  ff 306          iii,  13  ff 270 

xxi,  33-46 152,  312          iv,  26-29  309 

xxii,  1-14 152          v,  7 146,  148 

xxii,  41-46  89          vi,  3  ff 251 

xxiii,  8  ff.   155          vi,  14-16 320 

xxiii,  37  ff 86          vi,  15 320 

xxiv,  4-36 86,  102,  184          vi,  17 258 

xxiv,  24  f 88          viii,  28  320 

xxiv,  27 121,  124          viii,  31 121,  124 

xxiv,  30 121,  123,  124          viii,  38 121,  125,  128 

xxiv,  36 146,  147          ix,  1 122 

xxiv,  37 121,  124          ix,  7   146 

xxiv,  39 121,  124          ix,  8 124 

xxiv,  44 121,  124          ix,  9   121 

xxv,  14  ff 307          ix,  11-13 118,  124 

xxv,  31  ff 86,  121,  123          ix,  12 121 

xxvi,  2 121,  123          ix,  31 121,  125 

xxvi,  24 121,  124,  125          x,  11,  12 304 

xxvi,  45 121,  124          x,  23  125 

xxvi,  50   123          x,  29 123 

xxvi,  52    306          x,  33 121 

xxvi,  63    146          x,  45 121,  124 

xxvi,  64 121,  125          xii,  1  ff 312 

xxvii,  7   147          xii,  26  f 118 

xxvii,  9   124          xii,  35-37  89 

xxvii,  30 125          xiii,  5-32 86,  102,  184 


INDEX 


419 


xiii,  26 106,  121,  125 

xiii,  32   147 

xiv,  If 123 

xiv,  21 118,  121,  124,  125 

xiv,  41 121,124 

xiv,  61    146 

xiv,  62 121,  125 

xv,  39 146,  150 

xvi,  1-8   394 

xvi,  9-20 392,  394 

LUKE 

i,  5 241 

i,  5-25 250 

i,  32  ff 146,  148 

i,  34,  35 146,  250 

i,  41 250 

i,  46-55  250 

i,  57-80  250 

ii,  2   241 

ii,  8ff 247 

ii,  39   247 

ii,  41-51  251 

iii,  1 241,  256 

iii,  19  f 258 

iii,  22 146,  148 

iii,  23  250 

iii,  23  ff 69 

iii,  28-38 247 

iii,  38 146,  147 

iv,  1-13   262 

iv,  3   146 

iv,  9 146 

iv,  16-30   263 

iv,  25-27 312 

v,  24 121,  125 

v,  27-32   268 

vi,  5 121,  125 

vi,  22 121,  123 

vi,  43  ff 300 

vii,  1-10  267 

vii,  13  ff 270 

vii,  34 121,  124,  128 

viii,  2 269 

viii,  3, 271 

viii,  28 146,  148  f. 

ix,  2 121 


ix,  7-9  320 

ix,  8  320 

ix,  19 320 

ix,  22 124 

ix,  26 121,  125,  128 

ix,  27 122 

ix,  35 146 

ix,  44 121,  125 

ix,  58 121,  124 

x,  21  ff 147,  151 

x,  29-37 312 

xi,  2ff 153 

xi,  30 121,  124 

xi,  40 85 

xi,  49   184 

xii,  8 121,  123 

xii,  10 121,  124 

xii,  11  f 122 

xii,  31   ....299 

xii,  40  121 

xii,  46 124- 

xii,  70   146 

xiii,  4  268 

xiii,  32  266 

xiv,  15-24 152 

xv,  3-7 311 

xv,  8-10 311 

xv,  11  ff 311 

xvi,  Iff .307 

xvii,  10   311 

xvii,  20  ff .123,  309 

xvii,  22 121 

xvii,  24 121,  124 

xvii,  26 121,  124 

xvii,  30 121,  124 

xviii,  8 121,  124 

xviii,  9-14 313 

xviii,  16 266 

xviii,  29  123 

xviii,  31 121,  125 

xix,  10 121,  123 

xix,  11  ff 307 

xx,  9ff 312 

xx,  27-40 312,  372 

xx,  36 145,  156 

xx,  41-44 . .  89 


420 


INDEX 


xxi,  8-36 86,  102,  184 

xxi,  27 121,  125 

xxi,  34-36 121,  123 

xxii,  If 123 

xxii,  18   , 298 

xxii,  22 121,  125 

xxii,  24  ff 303 

xxii,  27-30 .124 

xxii,  28 262 

xxii,  36   306 

xxii,  48 121,  123,  128 

xxii,  69 121,  125 

xxii,  70  146 

xxiii,  47  150 

xxiv,  Iff 392 

xxiv,  6 393 

xxiv,  7 121 

xxiv,  16   320 

xxvii,  7  123 

JOHN 

i,  1 159 

i,  14  159 

i,  18 13,  14,  157 

i,  34  157 

i,  50 157 

i,  51 121 

ii,  1   321 

ii,  20  242 

iii,  13  121 

ili,  14 121 

iii,  16,  17,  18 157 

iii,  35,  36 157 

iv,  5ff 87 

iv,  23 379 

v,  20,  21,  22,  23,  25,  26 157 

v,  27 .121 

vi,  40 157 

vi,  53 53,56,121 

vi,  62 121 

vi,  63 56 

vi,  69 157 

vii,  52-viii,  11 206 

viii,  28   121 

viii,  35  f 157 

viii,  57  157 

ix,  35 121 


x,  33  ff 158 

x,  36 157 

xi,  4,  37 157 

xii,  23,  34 121 

xiii,  31 121,  128 

xiv,  13   157 

xvi,  1 157 

xvii,  11 157 

xix,  7   320 

xx,  Iff. 392 

xx,  9 320 

xx,  29 158 

xx,  31 157 

xxi,  Iff 392,  393,  395 

ACTS 

ii,  25  ff 320 

v,  36 87 

vii,  56  113 

xiii,  34  ff 320 

xvii,  1 196 

xviii,  If.  178 

EOMANS 

i,  Iff 196-204 

ix,  11 53,  54 

I  CORINTHIANS 

i,  Iff. 196-204 

x,  1-4 53,  56 

xv,  3-8 395,  397 

xv,  4 ..320,  321 

xv,  5-11  200 

xv,  20 320 

xv,  45-49 53 

xv,  49 65 

II  CORINTHIANS 

i,  Iff 196  ff. 

i,  8 380 

GALATIANS 

i,  Iff 196  ff. 

iii,  19  54 

iv,  26  ff 62 

I  THESSALONIANS 

i,  Iff 196 

II  THESSALONIANS 

i,  Iff 196 

i,8 380 


INDEX 


421 


EPHESIANS 

i,  Iff 193  f.,  200f. 

i,  15-17  194 

COLOSSIANS 

i,    1    ff 194 

i,  4 194 

PHILEMON 

vs.  Iff 194 

vss.  4-6  194 

PHILIPPIANS 

i,  1 195 

iv,  3   195 

TITUS 

i,  Iff 193 

I  TIMOTHY 

i,  Iff 193 

II  TIMOTHY 

i,  Iff 193 

HEBREWS 

i,  Iff 193 

viii,  Iff 53 

ix,  13,  14 54 

ix,  23,  24 65 

ix,  24 54 

xi,  10 53 

xii,  24   54 

I  PETER 

i,  Iff 192 

iii,  17 53 

II  PETER 

i,  Iff 193 

ii,  11   11 

I  JOHN 

i,  Iff 192 

II  JOHN 

i,  Iff 192 

III  JOHN 

i,  Iff 192 

JAMES 

i,  Iff 192 

JUDE 

i,  Iff 191 

REVELATION 

i,  Iff 184 

i,  13 113,  119 


xi,  1,  2 82 

xi-xiii 184 

xii,  Iff 82,  84 

xiv,  14 113,  119 

xvii-xviii   184 

xviii,  16   258 

xix,  13 169 

xxi,  10   65 

GOSPEL  OP  PETER 

Iff 206,  207 

58  ff 392,  394,  395 

GOSPEL  OF  HEBREWS 

1  ff 205,  206,  259,  261 

GOSPEL  OF  EBIONITES 

Iff 206,  260 

GOSPEL  OF  EGYPTIANS 

Iff 206 

GOSPEL  OF  NICODEMUS 

Iff ...207 

PROTEVANGELIUM  JACOBI 
Iff 207 

LOGIA  JESU 

Iff 170,  206 

PREDICATIO  PATJLI 

Iff 259,  260 

DlDACHE 

Iff. 183,  194,  397 

BARNABAS 

Iff 187 

HERMAS 

Iff 183,  184 

CLEMENT 

I  Epistle 187,  188 

II  Epistle 188 

Homilies   187 

Recognitions    187 

IGNATIUS 

Romans,  etc 188-191 

POLYCARP 

Philippians 191 

TARGUMS 

To  Exodus  xl,  11 91 

I  Samuel  xxiv,  7 149 

II  Samuel  vii,  14 145 

Zech.  iv,  7 92 


422 


INDEX 


Psalm  ii,  7 145 

Psalm  xviii,  7 149 

Canticles  iv,  5 91 

MlSHNA 

Jadiam  iv,  6 182 

Shabbath  i,  3 252 

SHEMONEH  ESREH 

14,  15,  17 90 

BERESHITH  EABBA 

100 321 

KOHELETH  EABBA 

To  i,  8 .182 

TOSEPHTA 

Chullin  ii,  24 182 


PALESTINIAN  TALMUD 

Shabbath    14 247 

BABYLONIAN  TALMUD 

Aboda  Zara  16  b 182,  252 

Aboda  Zara  17  a.  .182,  243,  252 

Bekoroth    8    a 182 

Chullin  27  b 182 

Megilla  70  a   246 

Menachoth  65  b 182 

Sanhedrin  98  b   83 

Sanhedrin  107  b  247 

Shabbath  104  b 247 

Shabbath   116  a 182 

Sota  47  a  247 

Sukka  52  a 91 

Taanith  68  d  .  ...88 


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Harvard  University 

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"  They  are  pregnant  with  suggestion  and  reveal  a  depth  of  broad  Christian 
scholarship  together  with  a  keen  insight  into  the  demands  of  the  modern 
world  upon  the  scholar."— New  York  Commercial  Advertiser. 

"  His  logic  is  sound,  and  the  sane,  temperate  tone  of  his  essays  invites 
conviction."— Milwaukee  Sentinel. 


THE   MACMILLAN   COMPANY,  64-66  Fifth  Avenue,  New  York 


THIS  BOOK  IS  DUE  ON  THE  LAST  DATE 
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AN  INITIAL  FINE  OF  25  CENTS 

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qcr  14         = 

M/»y  27  I935 

M   0,0  ^ 

^ON 

APR  30  1945 

AW  13   W45 

,     1530LfMA* 

.HI  14  59S8 

jwV    l 

LD  21-100m-7,'33 

YC  40820 


